In The Blood
by FluffleNeCharka
Summary: A murder triggers repressed memories in Danny. Searching for answers, his own mind actively working against him, Danny finds that there's more to the paranormal than just ghosts, and more to his own origin than he knew. Dash/OC. Complete.
1. Retrocognitivity

_From Childhood's hour I have not been as others were; I have not seen as others saw. _- Edgar Allan Poe, Alone

* * *

Danny dreamed.

He dreamed of terrible things, blood and metal, screams pleading him to stop, please stop. And he _didn't_. He dreamt of the way the bright red would look on his hands, on the concrete, on his clothes and whatever he'd used to get the job done. There would be no guilt, no pain, no agony over what he'd done, just the pure sadistic glee that he'd always wanted to indulge in during his waking hours. Everything felt hot and blurry, undeniably right. The screams and whimpers of the dying filled him like a breath of fresh air, and everything was perfect in a way it had never been. Danny woke up with the same terror and shame most teenagers had from wet dreams, but this couldn't be rationalized away as hormones or a phase. He woke up content and warm and _happy_ until he remembered how very wrong it was. He was supposed to be a hero. There was nothing heroic about the things he dreamed of.

The good news was that no one knew. No one even had an inkling. Why would kind, thoughtful, goofy Danny ever want to hurt anyone? He was a slacker, a video game player, an uncool bystander. He wasn't the kind of person who was supposed to be… Whatever he was. Insane seemed too harsh, but he wasn't a sociopath. He reassured himself of that every time he was in his Psychology class. Sociopaths didn't hate themselves for thinking about what he thought about. If he were really evil he would've done something by now. Danny Fenton wasn't evil. He repeated that to himself like a survival mantra whenever he woke up in the middle of the night, terrified, excited, and horrified all at once. Danny was a superhero. He fought ghosts and saved people. He had never used his powers to kill anyone. He had never even contemplated it. Danny never thought about it; he forced himself not to face what it might mean. If he ignored it maybe it would go away and he'd wake up one day normal and sane. Maybe one day he wouldn't close his eyes and be able to picture what it looked like when skin and muscle separated, the way the red blossomed forth like a flood; a memory that wasn't supposed to be his.

There wasn't a cause. There wasn't a trigger. There were only the months where it haunted him and the months where it was like he'd never had a bad dream. Sometimes, for six or seven months at a stretch, he was just Danny. Then, inevitably, it would come back with a vengeance. There was something frenzied and panicked about the dream that made him feel like he'd just been on a rollercoaster. Black hair and thin arms, knives, blood, so much blood that there had to be at least three people dead, and a dimly lit place. It could've been a building, it could've been night time outside. All he knew was that every night he woke up wanting to strangle someone and it scared him. Danny was not a monster. He repeated this until he was absolutely sure of it, until the memory became dim in his mind like it wasn't even his. Then eventually he would go to sleep again. All humans had to. And then it was back, haunting, tantalizing, so tempting it hurt, and in his dreams he gave into it faster and faster with each passing night. He woke up feeling more tired than he had been when he slept. It was all he could do not to cry with frustration sometimes because it was all so opposite of what he was, such an inversion of who he wanted to be. _This isn't me,_ he'd think sometimes. _This _isn't_ me._

Presently it was night twelve of the nightmare-sweet dream hybrid he was growing to hate and look forward to so much. He hadn't told anyone, but after years of this cycle they were starting to see a change. His mother said he was tired. Jazz was worried about his stress levels. Sam had told him he'd zoned out three times yesterday. The inky-haired teen laid back on his bed and stared at the ceiling, unwilling to go to sleep and face whatever this was and too exhausted to do anything else. After some deliberation mentally, Danny turned on his computer. Though new, the town website was useful for weather reports, news updates and ghost sightings. He could at least get a head start on this stuff if he was going to be spending the night sleepless. Having kicked more than enough ghost butt for one lifetime, Danny Phantom had been dabbling in catching mundane criminals as well. After all, there wasn't a human alive that could fight him off one on one. This was more or less Phantom's saving grace with the police force, who had been rather undecided on whether or not to trust him before. Slow but surely they were beginning to appreciate just what a superhero's presence could mean for them. The chief of police had even thanked him personally once and promised to post any major unsolved recent criminal activity on the town's website. That way he could be in contact with Danny Phantom without having the hero's location compromised in any way.

_Chief Tomor should really get a medal or something,_ Danny thought as he scrolled by an article of the Mongolian police chief's recent arrest of an escaped convict. _The man never seems to sleep. He's done more in the past two months than the last guy did in his whole career… I wonder if Walker's one of his ancestors._ He studied the topaz eyed man's picture for a moment before shaking his head. Danny had strange thoughts when he was half asleep. None of them were prone to making much sense. Reaching for the glass of water he always kept in his room at night, the teenager multitasked, reading and drinking at the same time in an attempt to wake up. It was five in the morning, so the odds of him getting back to sleep were pretty low, and school was going to be hectic with the freshmen forced to decorate the gym for the upcoming winter dance. He'd have liked more sleep beforehand, but it wasn't worth the attempt at this point. Setting the now empty glass down, he hit the refresh button with the knowledge that Tomor would continually screw over the whole concept of a schedule and put urgent news updates up as needed. Emergencies were more important to him than rules and systems. Maybe that was why Danny actually liked helping the cops for the first time in his life.

_Tomor Update._ Danny vaguely wondered if the man knew he was supposed to start it off with Police Chief Full Name Here, before realizing that whatever it was would have to be deadly serious for him to skip that. Sighing faintly, he clicked the red text and was transferred over to a page written in the Chief's typical dark red font. _Citizens are warned to stay indoors and not to panic. Travel together in groups as large as possible. We have reason to believe a serial killer is in the city limits. He is extremely dangerous, armed, and on the attack. Four murders tonight are verified to be his. Stay indoors, stay in groups, and stay calm. The FBI is on their way. We are unable to give a physical description of the killer at this time. _

There was a pause as the concept of someone casually coming into his city and murdering four people was processed by Danny's brain. Then he felt anger and a much suppressed feeling of curiosity. Some twisted part of him wanted to see the blood. He was going to ignore whatever that said about him and just get on with his duty. Transforming into his spectral form, he left the house silent as a ghost could be. Outside there was snow, the slow, lazy fat flakes tumbling down to coat the city in white. It was mostly untouched by human footsteps. When he got high enough, he could see the red and blue lights of two police cars. Danny sighed and flew towards the scene of the crime with mixed dread, anticipation and disgust. Things were always bad if he had to be called in. If they were calling in Danny, the FBI, and advertising the latter's presence in an attempt to scare off the killer, things were bound to be gut-wrenchingly awful. He spotted the police chief's tall form lingering by the front of an alley, his face illuminated by the flashing squad car lights. The ghostly hero swooped down to hover in front of him, not touching the ground to avoid spoiling the crime scene.

"Phantom, that was fast. Thank you for coming." Tomor held out a hand to stop the halfa as he began to move forward. Danny could have phased through him, and normally he would have, if the police officer's eyes hadn't held such a disgusted, angry look. "You don't want to see that just yet, trust me. And I doubt it would help matters. I didn't want you here for crime scene analysis. I need your help stopping this guy, as soon as possible."

"I know, but without a physical description, I don't even know what I'm looking for," Danny objected, landing with a soft thump. "What am I supposed to go on? How do you even know these are all the work of one person?"

Tomor paused, pushing a strand of stringy, wavy black hair behind his ear. "How old are you?" he asked suddenly. "When you died, you were pretty young, right?" He shifted uneasily. "I don't want to scar you for life. I'm not trying to be patronizing, but… when you see this, you'll understand. I just don't know if I want you to see it."

A growing sense of unease was working its way into Danny's mind. He felt the same nervous terror he would have before going on a rollercoaster. "If it helps catch this guy, I should probably see it, Chief."

The man stepped aside, sighing quietly. "You're right. Just don't say I didn't warn you."

Danny floated forward. There was a pause, a moment where Tomor thought maybe his fear was unfounded. For a moment Danny saw the scene without comprehending what was in front of him. In the silence all he could hear was the mumblings and footsteps of the police officers. Everything was cold and calm. He stared at the bodies with a furrowed brow. Something was happening in his mind, that almost-there sensation he always had when he was trying to remember a word or what homework he had. This was all familiar somehow…

_Heat, sweltering heat; sweat was dripping off her brow as she moves, strands of long hair sticking to her face. Flashes of light on metal, the sight of fresh impossibly red blood on the silver. There is blood everywhere. She is drenched in it, it's soaking through her jeans and her shirt, he is sitting in corner watching it pool all around him and shaking. The bodies weren't even bodies anymore. Insides were outside, faces rendered unrecognizable, shreds of human flesh all around the room, on the ceiling and on the walls. She reaches out towards him and when her hands brush up against his they are like ice. Her face is the shape of a heart and she has a voice he trusts. Lights flicker all around them. There is a growl from somewhere out in the darkness. Her hands are covered in blood, the fingers long and impossibly thin. There's a crash somewhere behind her; the door is splintering and breaking down with each blow and he screams._

_He takes her hands and she hefts him up onto her chest, where he clings on for dear life. He's crying. Everything smells of blood. It's too hot. He's shaking. She's swaying on her feet and shivering in spite of the heat. He can hear her heart beating like a drum in her chest._

"_I won't let them get you," she promises, and then the door breaks open and he screams._


	2. Radiance

_**Author's Notes to my reviewers, in the order they reviewed.**_

**It's Been A Secret:** Yes, she knew him. Obviously I can't say more without spoiling it, but as you'll see in this chapter she was part of his life at one point.

**Pixie dust of doom:** Flashbacks will be in italics and in present tense. My bad for not explaining that, I suppose. However, the choice of flashback format – no warning saying THIS IS A FLASHBACK, present tense instead of past, etc. – are all deliberately there to make it feel more like a random emerging memory. It's supposed to be a little confusing. It is, after all, an out-of-nowhere recollection. And yes, this will not just be a murder story NCIS style; this is going to be a bit more complex than that.

**Anneria Wings:** Aaand now I'm blushing. Thank you for the compliment; I don't think my writing's flawless, but that's high praise and it makes me smile. I'm happy that the images were vivid, as that was what I was going for.

**OC Summers:** I'm writing as fast as I can, though with college and all that paperwork going on updates may be unscheduled and sporadic.

**Invader Johnny:** You were supposed to be creeped out. That's just a sign that you're still sane. That said, I'm really pleased that you consider this to be an intriguing premise when I know that there's so many other fics out there all my readers could be focusing on. :)

**Dragon Dancer 123:** I can almost guarantee that whatever you're thinking is going on, it's actually worse than that. But let's face it, the end of Chapter One didn't leave much room for good possibilities, did it? That being as it is, don't hesitate to review with your theories about what's going on. It'll be interesting to see said theories evolve as more and more details get revealed.

And on a happier side note, if Tomor ever feels like a Marty Stu, somebody chime in and tell me. I just didn't want to do the Incompetent Police Chief thing when that's so overused; I'd rather have him be good at his job and genuinely care about it. Maybe it's because I'm in so many fandoms, but I'm pretty sick of the uncaring, unfeeling jerk police chief thing.

Now, on with the show. Err, fic. You know what I mean.

* * *

_We should not be upset that others hide the truth from us, when we hide it so often from ourselves. - _François de La Rochefoucauld _

* * *

_

"Danny?" Someone was shaking him by the shoulders. "Danny, wake up."

He opened his eyes to meet golden ones. Chief Tomor. Danny stared dumbly at him for a moment. "What just happened?"

"You just broke the laws of natural science and passed out, kid. How you feeling?" Chief Tomor hauled Danny to his feet with one hand; for a wiry man in his forties he was surprisingly strong. "Guess there's some things that man was not meant to see."

Danny closed his eyes and would've taken a deep breath but for his ghost form. _That woman… who was she?_ From the depths of his memories the strangely bright and cheerful memory of a house with taupe and gray striped wallpaper came to mind. His spring bud green eyes snapped open and he looked around the alley, reassuring himself that this was real. Above him the winter night's sky was dark gray and endless. He swayed on his feet for a moment before turning to Tomor with a look that was all business. His head was pounding, but people were dead and the past was just that, the past. He could work out what was going on then at some later date. These people needed him now.

The handiwork was much the same as his memory; bodies rendered barely identifiable lengths of torn flesh and faces destroyed. What differed was that chunks of these people were missing. Not strewn about, literally just missing entirely, too much to just be hidden in the shadow. It was almost like – Danny gagged and looked at Chief Tomor with a mounting sense of disgust. Some little part of him was enthralled with the horrorshow, but he shoved that aside as hard as he could and remembered that these people were just that, _people_. They had families and futures, friends, bills, they had dreams and hopes and problems. Now they and everything they could ever be had been destroyed and he still didn't know why or how. Something in the back of his head, an instinct without an origin, told him to look at their bodies more closely. He stepped closer, floated off the ground and hovered over. The police lights confirmed his suspicion.

"They were eaten." It was a statement, not a question.

Tomor nodded all the same. "It looks like it, yes. Whether they were alive or not at the time we'll have to wait for the autopsy and forensics to know. Ever seen anything like this before?"

"No. This looks like you'd need to be strong as a ghost to do it, I just don't know anyone who would do it in the first place." The hybrid paused. "I could ask some of the other ghosts, see what they know. They're almost all jerks with issues socially, but they wouldn't let this go unpunished. If it is a ghost then Walker at least would want to put this guy in prison."

Blink. Then, "Who?"

"The realm where all the ghosts 'live' for lack of a better word has a prison. Walker's the head of it." Danny floated over to Tomor and landed outside the crime scene, not wanting to mess it up. "I think the proper Mongolian phrase is 'even evil has standards'."

"Nice to know that holds true after death," the tan skinned man replied, his voice as deadpan as Danny's own. "Well, you'd better get out of here before Mayor Impaler gets here."

The human ghost hybrid snorted at the nickname as he lifted into the air. "You're not fond of Vlad, are you?"

"Oh, no, Phantom, every night I lay awake dreaming of his big strong arms wrapping around me," Tomor shot back dryly. "But hush, for no one must know of our forbidden love."

Danny laughed as he went invisible. The effect was both disconcerting and comforting to the police force gathered below. Wishing for the seventh time in as many minutes that he hadn't given up smoking, the Mongolian-American gestured for the blood splatter analyst to come forward. The man had to have driven at illegally fast speeds across town to get here, but Tomor didn't comment on it as Forensics Officer Morgan made his way through the perimeter. His dark green eyes were worried and wide awake as he stepped closer, breath coming out in white puffs and hanging in the air. Running a gloved hand through his dark brown hair, Dexter Morgan surveyed the scene and let out a low whistle. That was a very bad thing; he had spent twelve years on the force in far more violent cities than this. Like many American police officers he had chosen the rough but fast route of working in a major city for his rookie year instead of waiting for positions to open up locally. He had a reputation for being virtually unshakable.

"Well, this is…" Dexter gestured with his hands to the bodies and then raised his hands up in a helpless gesture. "Remind me why I left Miami again?"

His boss grinned, grimly. "I believe it was because you wanted a transfer into a nice quiet little town where nothing happens." His smile vanished just as quickly as it had come. "First impressions?"

"All of this was done while they were still alive. Dead blood, even a very recently deceased person's blood, doesn't splatter or smear like this. A lot of it hasn't even turned brown yet and there's a line of blood on the wall from where an artery was cut-"

"Are you telling me these people were eaten alive, Officer?"

There was a pause. The brunette sighed heavily. "Yes." He blinked in surprise as Tomor stormed off, scowling darkly. "Where are you going?"

"I'm getting cigarettes."

* * *

The school was filled to the brim with talk.

Murder was second string to the Valentine's dance. It was a month away and it was a girls ask boys affair, and thus it had the ability to generate absurd amounts of drama. Danny and Sam sat back and watched Tucker wait by his locker with his best alluring smile. There were no takers, but he didn't let that get his spirits down as he and Sam explained to Danny the recent dating drama that had unfolded as Danny was in the Ghost Zone asking for Walker's help. To his surprise the ghost had actually been rather agreeable, and incredibly angry once he found out one of the victims was only three years old. Danny was young, but he had powers. A three year old wasn't fair game by any definition of the term.

"So," Sam was saying, "Dash is going out with Rashmi because she cut Paulina to the chase and has a personality that's not grating as sandpaper. In retaliation, Paulina asked Kwan to the dance, leaving Valerie dateless. Valerie's going out with that really sweet history nerd – I think his name's Rhodey? Rhodes? Something like that – and now Kwan's upset because she's falling in love with him completely and it's been, what, three hours?"

Danny's head hurt. "Why is high school so complicated? And who the heck is Rashmi, anyway?"

"She's a middle schooler, Danny, a middle schooler with nerves of steel," Tucker chimed in, folding his arms. "Seriously, when we were in seventh grade the word 'date' still filled us with terror. That girl's got balls."

"Don't say that, Tucker, it sounds _wrong_," Sam chided as the boys snickered. "I guess Dash has had enough of Paulina's crap. Maybe evil really does have standards."

"Nice," Tucker grinned, and they high fived as Danny yawned. "Didn't get any sleep, huh?"

"Yeah, well, murder investigations tend to be time consuming. Not all of us get to hang around the lockers wagging eyebrows at every girl who walks by – which, by the way, is so desperate that even _I_ won't try it." Blue eyes rolling as Tucker loudly protested in the background, the three made their way to their first period class. _Another exciting day in the wonderful world of Math class,_ Danny thought. _Though at least Miss Asaji doesn't pick on anyone, unlike Lancer._

The class went along fairly normally; the lecture was quick and the homework assignment was easily done in class for most people. Danny had his done with ten minutes to spare and immediately laid his head done for a quick nap. He felt exhausted mentally and physically. There was a lull in which he was half aware of the world around him, half asleep. Then, in that way only the truly worked to the bone can, he was out like a light.

_There are people in the house. He has to move down one step to see them clearly._

_One is a woman with impossibly long hair that falls in one long black braid to her mid thighs. She wears lots of layers and has a blanket with her. The man who enters trails behind her and talks a lot. His voice is quiet, his eyes are pleading and he is nervous. They don't see the little child on the stairs up above them yet. She is looking for him, though, calling out for him worriedly. The cold makes their breath come out in puffs and her skin flush with red. He wants to run to her, but it's so cold he can't move, can only watch and whimper. The house smells of blood and bitter almonds. He is scared to leave for some reason._

_The noise reaches her ears. She turns around and relief blossoms across her face. "There you are!" she exclaims, and she takes the stairs two at a time to reach him. "I was so scared – don't ever do that to me again!"_

_There's a clatter as hail begins to hit the house's roof. "Andra," the man behind her says sharply, "We need to leave while we still can."_

_The next thing he knows he's scooped up, wrapped in a warm blanket and tucked inside her coat, held close to her body. She's clinging to him with both arms. Tremors are making their way through his small frame. The adults share a look they think he doesn't catch, all worry and seriousness, but already he feels better. He burrows his head into her shoulder and feels the warmth of her scarves against his face and he never wants to be alone ever again. Outside things are infinitely colder and he winces. Andra's smile to him is kind._

"_It's okay, I've got you."_

Danny woke up with a keen pang of loss. He wrote everything down in his notebook with such gusto and single minded focus that he barely even registered what Mr. Lancer said for the first three minutes of English. Not that it mattered, as he was conversing with Ms. Asaji in low tones. The two teachers were very different in both style and demeanor; where she was snarky, sarcastic and fun, flexible in her teaching plan and fair, Mr. Lancer was every bit the stereotypical mean no fun English teacher you'd see on a sitcom. However, against all logic, they had become fast friends. This was now cemented with her asking him to the school dance as her 'partner and co-chaperone', as if the whole class couldn't see through that excuse. Someone in the back let out a catcall whistle and the class erupted into giggles. Mr. Lancer had a date with a woman ten years his junior. Danny sat there and, despite knowing that this was supposed to be hilarious, he felt nothing. He found he really didn't care very much right now.

The sharp, burning smell of something acidic and smoky was still lingering in the air like a ghost over his shoulder.

Today was going to be a long day.

* * *

Sometimes Danny felt like he was just sleepwalking through life, waiting for the next ghost attack.

Before the ghosts he had just been living life asleep.

Sometimes the monotony of it all was suffocating. There were days when he would look around and see only meaningless chatter all around him. Ask Danny what he did between his second period class and lunch, and he would only stare blankly in response. He had truthfully been doodling in his notebook lost in half remembered images and memories that were completely incomprehensible. They were like movie clips without the rest of the movie, photos from someone else's scrapbook, and he was doing well to keep most of them in his head long enough to write them down. Danny had never been deeply into drawing, but his did his best to sketch things out that he recalled onto the pages of his notebook. Something important was hidden in these images. There was something very wrong here that he needed to have figured out. This was… this was…

He didn't know what any of this was. And that was terrifying, quite frankly. He'd always thought he'd known who he was. He'd always thought that he was Danny Fenton, son of Maddie and Jack Fenton, normal kid with occasional nightmares and some odd hobbies. He thought he'd had a completely normal life up until now. The wrench in that had always been the strange feelings and stranger nightmares. Now out of the darkness of those bodies in the alley emerged all of this, all these half-recalled faces and long forgotten lullabies he'd never known were there. Danny was struck by the thought that he didn't know who he was anymore. It was all confusing, frustrating and increasingly illogical. This couldn't be happening to him. His life was weird but it was never dark. Things never made this little sense. Everything always worked out for the better. Nothing ever went bump in Danny Phantom's night.

Sam found him engrossed in his own thoughts, sitting alone outside in the frigid cold. He was the only loser who wanted to eat outside when it was like this. The lonely outside world was comforting in its own way. Cold air helped clear his head and helped bring back some clarity. His palatinate blue eyes flickered upward briefly when Sam said hi. Tucker was inside trying to get a date. Inside the school building the world continued to be normal, high school drama and love affairs falling like dominos. The only weird thing was that he couldn't enjoy any of it. He couldn't be a part of the laughing, happy masses today, as much as he wanted to. It was all he could do to get through the day. The smell of bitter, acidic, painful almost-blood hadn't left him since the memory. It hurt to breathe now.

And there stood Sam, her han-dye purple eyes squinting in the harsh light of the snow. "Danny, are you okay?"

"No." He rubbed at his eyes. "I… when I saw the murders this morning… Sam, I think I'm going crazy." He held out his notebook to her. "Does any of this make sense to you? I can't stop thinking and it's driving me nuts. There's all these _things_…"

Her brow furrowed. "You do realize it's impossible to have this many repressed memories pop up in less than twelve hours, right? I mean, we covered that in Psychology last week, remember? The human mind-"

"I'm not all human, remember?"

She went silent at that. They were both still unclear on the full ramifications of Danny's transformation and what that meant for him. His blood pressure had been far lower than any human's normally was ever since that day, and it had never returned to normal. While he was growing at an average rate, his dietary needs had changed from 'enjoys junk food and needs an average number of calories' to 'needs junk food to meet the calorie needs'. Flying and fighting didn't take much out of him in his ghost form, but his physical form would feel the effects the instant he changed back. What he and his friends had never discussed was what his hybrid status would mean psychologically and neurologically. It hadn't even crossed his mind, what with the ghost fighting and secret keeping. Now they were both faced with the fact that the normal rules of what was psychologically possible might not apply to him.

"Danny, none of this makes any sense," she said after a few long moments of reading. "They're all jumbled up. I think you need an expert opinion on this."

"I am _not_ telling Jazz-" he started intensely. Sam held up a hand to stop him. Her mitten had bats embroidered on them.

"I wasn't going to suggest that, Danny. I meant somebody versed in the paranormal who won't think you're crazy when you try to talk to them." She smiled warmly. "Luckily for you I know just the guy for the job. Or rather, just the gal. Amity Park's only got one resident parapsychologist, you know, and she doesn't take walk in appointments."

"And how is that good news?" he asked as she flipped through his notebook, still smirking.

"It's good news because I know her kid, and I know that once she sees _this_," Sam pointed to a particular page, "She won't be able to resist taking you on as a client." A pause, then, "What _is_ this, anyway?"

A shadowy figure, made of smoky darkness, was staring in from a window. There was no nose, no mouth, only eyes that were bright white and strangely small. It stared down at the room from a pitch black night, only the dimmest, faintest outlines of the room's furniture visible. A man stood between the thing and the child huddled in terror on the floor. His body was somehow just sort of wrong, too lean and thin, with legs that were impossibly long. Danny could close his eyes and see the man turn to him with a solemn smile and tell him to get out right now, a voice so achingly familiar it hurt and a face he couldn't remember except for the eyes as dark as night.

"I don't know, Sam," Danny said softly. "But I need to find out."

* * *

It was snowing that evening.

Rashmi Pashki was breathing hard as she ran down the street, enjoying the cold air whipping past her. Her dark brown hair was speckled with flakes that, when they melted, would probably drench her. She hardly cared as she saw Dash's house come into view ahead, down one last hill. Weighing the pros and cons of using her backpack as a sled (on the one hand, awesome, on the other, might drench her textbook) she didn't see the child in front of her until she slipped and crashed into him. The Hindu girl blinked rapidly for a moment, then felt her face turn beet red. Having only been in the United States for about six months, she'd had more embarrassing slip ups in snow than most of her class combined. She slipped somewhat even trying to get up.

"I'm so sorry, I wasn't looking where I was going – here, let me help you," she said in one big rush, pulling the boy to his feet. He was shorter than she was, with jet black hair and eyes that were Isabelline; she would've thought he was quite handsome had he not been shivering in the cold. "Oh, you poor thing, are you new here too? Here, have my jacket, I've got another at home."

He blinked at her, raising his eyebrows uncertainly. She was already dusting him off, noting how frozen he felt and how his skin was almost as white as the snow. Rashmi thought that people's skin was supposed to flush in the cold. Maybe he'd been out far too long, then. Like her older brother would to her, she helped him into the coat and buttoned it up with surprising speed. He watched her silently. If she found this to be creepy, she didn't show it, taking her hat out of her pocket and fitting it onto his head before grinning obliviously at him.

"You'd better get home. Your parents are probably worried," Rashmi said kindly, pushing her hair behind her ears. "Well, bye."

She turned and made the slippery, difficult trek down the hill. When she reached the bottom, she turned to look behind her, expecting the boy to be gone. Instead he was glowing like a candle in the night, staring straight at her with his wide near-white eyes, his pupils down to dots. Rashmi froze on the spot. His golden glow was shifting and flickering, moving with the wind and snow, and it was all she could do not to scream. She barely registered the door to Dash's house opening or her boyfriend's voice calling out to her in genuine concern. Rashmi took a slow step backwards, slowly turned to leave, and let out a shriek.

Something inhuman and indescribable was behind Dash, and there was no time to warn him before it struck.


	3. Metachoric

**To My Reviewers in the order they reviewed:**

**Dragon Dancer 123: **There is no response to those first two sentences that I could make without giving away bits of the plot. It's nice to see that Tomor the snarky cop isn't obnoxious and unlikable, though, since given the plot OCs are kind of inevitable and a necessary evil. And I like your theories, though they're not entirely correct. Your first one's a bit closer to accurate than you'd like it to be.

**Invader Johnny:** I should probably point out that retrocognitivity was meant as a witty title, not as a sign of the actual events. It's an attempt to label these things so that a community on Live Journal will accept these as fulfillments of prompts over there, not as an attempt to hint at the plot. Sorry if I've been a bit unclear.

**Reader Junkie:** Aw, thanks. Nice to know that whatever flaws my writing may have, it isn't boring. Lord knows I've done enough revisions on this thing to cut out unnecessary scenes. I know I can get a bit wordy, but I'm trying to make it not drag on pointlessly.

**Dances With Death:** Firstly, your username would make a fantastic name for a rock band and I'm kind of hoping someone else out there has used it for that purpose. Secondly, I'll take that statement as a compliment and smile, given that things are just getting started.

Also, I'm pretty sure that Andra's on the verge of becoming what TV Tropes would call a Purity Sue, but future chapters are going to undo that, hopefully. I'm not actively trying to make her this way, it's just kind of happening. XD DX

* * *

_They all come to bad ends, and showed that universal altruism is as bad in its results as universal egotism._ – Oscar Wilde

* * *

"_You think this is a joke, Andra? You think this is cute? WHAT HAVE YOU DONE? You know what, don't answer that. I know what you did. You lied. You_ always_ lie. I can't trust as far I can throw you can I?" Something shatters against a wall. "I should have known! I should've known you'd try to pull this – you really just can't handle your own life, can you?" His voice is sharp and vicious; it drips venom and hate. "You get yourself in deep and you expect me to bail you out _again_, without so much as a thought as to what you're doing to me!"_

_She is growing desperate. "Please, David, I can explain! He's just a little boy, you can't just throw us out-"_

"_Like hell I can't! I'm not doing this anymore, I'm not taking the fall for you anymore! You want to flirt with death and dance your merry way into Hell, fine, do it on your own damn time. I don't need another sob story and another lecture on how much you love me. It'll just lead to yet another one of _these_, another knife to the heart." His voice is cracking; he is crying. "Is this all I am to you? A tool? Something to be used? Is… is that all I've ever been? How could you… You know what, nevermind. I don't want an explanation when there's no way to know if a damn word of it is true. Just take your stuff and go. This is over. I can't do this anymore. I can't… I just can't take this life, anymore."_

"_But what about-"_

"_He's not my kid. You can't trick me into that one, Andra, I've seen him. Handle your own mistakes this time. If you have an ounce of kindness in you, you'll kill the poor eldritch while you've got the chance."_

"_DAVID!" she practically screams at him._

_But his footsteps are quick and rapidly fading; soon there is only the wind and the quiet dripping of the facet nearby. The floor creaks when she moves. He squints into the light, which burns viciously and horribly into his eyes when she pulls back the blanket. He is huddled into a ball and trying very hard not to cry. He doesn't like it when they yell. This time seemed different. This time seemed final and they're alone now in an empty room. Her long hair falls down in tendrils; he catches one strand in each hand and looks at her eyes. Her gaze is distant and unseeing, her heart shaped face carefully blank._

_Then, slowly, she sinks to her knees, keels over, and begins to cry.

* * *

_

Danny woke up with tears streaming down his face.

In the darkness, only the growing moon provided a little light on the silhouettes of the contents of his room. His eyes flickered to the clock, which told him it was a little after midnight. Slowly, he wiped his face and stared down at the liquid on his hand. Usually he'd write this kind of thing down, but this… he could never forget this. He couldn't ever forget the screaming and the way she broke so completely and utterly. That hair black like night, that pale skin up against his. Her voice telling him she'd never let them get him. Her scent, flower petals, blood and sweat. Andra. There was no way to banish the image of her thin frame shaking with the force of her sobs.

"Mom," he whispered, and that was when he began to get angry.

"_-should kill the eldritch abomination-"_

_-the door was shattering with the impact of something snarling and huge scrambling against the pavement outside-_

_-eyes black like the night, a man's voice whispering to him, reassuring him the thunderstorm would pass, gently rocking him back and forth and cradling him tenderly, Andra in the doorway-_

"_-won't let them get you-"_

_-flashes of the forest, of bushes and trees and total darkness rushing by with alarming speed. Voices in the distance angry and growing louder, a gunshot to the left behind them loud as thunder-_

Hot tears filled his eyes. His fists clenched. Danny's head spun and his grasped his desk to keep from falling. Then he stormed downstairs, shaking with panic, anticipation, rage, betrayal and a whirlwind of emotions that he couldn't process. Images and voices haunted him like movie clips playing over and over in his mind. It was like he was in a room full of people and they were all trying to tell him something vital and desperately important. Somehow in that sea of chaos, whirling images, mixed feelings and general insanity something had broken through to him: he had parents. Parents who had loved him dearly. They were vivid and real and… gone.

He needed answers. He needed that stupid scrapbook of his mother's, because this couldn't be right. This couldn't be happening to him. His parents couldn't have lied to him like this. They loved him, right? So why would they hide all this from him? This couldn't be real – but it was, painfully real, so sharp and clear, images like photographs. Why hadn't they ever told him his mother was gone? Was she dead? Had she given him up? Why? Who was David? Where was Andra now? Who had shot at them? The blood – the bodies – where had that come from? His head was spinning and he could barely keep focused enough to grab the scrapbook and begin flipping through it. Danny at the sixth grade dance, Danny at the fourth grade Halloween play, Danny in second grade in the class photo. Where were his baby pictures? Where… He flipped back through the pictures. They had photos of Maddie pregnant. They had pictures of a four year old Danny asleep on Jazz's lap. What they didn't have was a single baby photo.

His hands began to shake. His head was swimming. His mother had left him. It was like a knife twisting into his heart. And yet he understood, understood on some horrifying and sickened level that she hadn't had any choice. She was completely alone. For reasons he couldn't fathom, people were after her. They were after him. His father was a mystery entirely, but he had been there, hadn't he? Danny remembered a voice and obsidian eyes that were warm and comforting. He remembered all kinds of things that made virtually no sense before until he pieced them together in this context. He had parents, two people who could claim that title besides Maddie and Jack, who had loved him dearly and protected him with everything they had. Then they'd vanished and there were so many memories where everything was bloody and violent, bodies, bones, splatters…

"Danny?" his mother said softly. He looked up at her with the most unreadable and emotional expression she'd ever seen on his young face. Jack was just behind her. Danny had no control over the way he analyzed their features and found none of them reflected within his own. "Sweetie, what-"

"Why didn't you tell me I was adopted?" he interrupted, his voice shaky. "Why did my mom leave me? Where… is she… is she okay? I… there's all these nightmares I've been having and… Mom, Dad, please, I gotta know…"

Maddie shuddered, and then leaned Jack for support, shutting her eyes. "Oh, Danny. We knew this day was going to come eventually. It's very complicated, but we promise we'll answer all your questions, okay, sweetie? We're not going to lie to you."

"There's some things, son," Jack cut in immediately, "That we just don't know. Your mother was so run down by the time she found us that we couldn't get much out of her."

Danny shut his eyes against the tidal wave of memory fragments fighting for his attention. _Kill the poor eldritch. I won't let them get you. It's okay son, it's just rain, shush-a-bye, shush-a-bye. You can't throw us out. David, don't do this._ His eyes opened abruptly. "How… how old was I when all this was… happening?"

Cautiously, Maddie sat down on the couch beside him. "You were three, or maybe four. We couldn't really tell and she didn't say for sure."

"Why didn't I remember any of this? Why didn't you tell me? What-"

"One at a time, Danny," Jack chided gently. "We didn't tell you _because_ you didn't remember. You just seemed to forget after the first few weeks. You were holed up in your room all the time – or any dark place you could find, really – and you cried an awful lot. We felt terrible for you until you just sort of snapped out of it and seemed to get over it. We thought everything was taking a turn for the better until we realized you had forgotten everything before you met us."

"I can see why!" the teenager snapped, all the anger finally surfacing. "Do you have any idea what people did to me? To _her_? We lived in the woods, in an abandoned building, in all these terrible places, and it was all she could do to keep me alive and _he threw her out_! She went to her best friend and he just threw us out and told her I was better off dead! Where the hell were her parents? Where were Social Services or the government or whoever? _Why didn't somebody help her_?"

Danny's voice had risen to a scream against his will. It was impossible, it was stupid, but somehow he felt infinitely attached to this woman he barely remembered. She was a part of him the same way Maddie was and she had been left to rot. The world had thrown out a single mother like trash, something that happened all over the world with frightening regularity, and it had never been anything other than a statistic until now. Now it was _his_ mother who the world forgot. Suddenly the loss went from token and vague to real as an open wound. Long hair he buried himself in, broken tears and a shaky, desperate vow to protect him. _Andra._ The word tasted foreign in his mouth even though it was so familiar. The statistics about parents and children alone in the world had never been anything other than a number in a book until it was his Andra, his mother with a will of steel who had somehow saved him.

"Where is she?" he asked desperately. His parents – they were still that, even if they weren't blood – looked at each other and then away nervously. "Where's my other dad? Where… are they okay?"

"She's dead, Danny," his mother whispered softly. All the color drained from Danny's face. The silence was deafening as his jaw dropped in something between grief and horror. "There was a serial killer in Pharos City, and they… they never caught him."

Pharos City.

The Pharos City Cannibal cases.

Those bodies in the ally were missing huge chunks, entire sections of their bodies.

_I won't let them get you!_

Danny didn't have words. Instead he just wrapped his arms around himself tightly. He saw more than felt Maddie's touch when she pulled him close. He wasn't even aware tears were in his eyes until she reached out to brush them away. Her eyes were kind and round, nothing like Andra's almond shaped orbs in shape and everything like them in emotion. She loved him. She was his mother. But he'd had another mother who he'd never known. He would never know her, because some sick freak had struck her down and she wasn't important enough for the cops to care about. Murder had never felt quite as real and horrifying. He was wasting time here when the murderer who had killed _his mother_ (and thought hurt more than he could've imagined it would) was loose. He needed to go ghost, get out there, work with the police, do something. And yet he couldn't move, couldn't think, could barely breathe.

"Why did she go back to the city?" he asked in a voice strangled and distant. "Why didn't she stay here?"

"It was for you, Danny." Jack ruffled his hair affectionately. "She said that you would be better off without her, that she had problems. She really thought she was a bad mother and we would be better parents to you than she ever could be. And once I saw you…" He looked at his wife. "Once _we_ saw you, we couldn't ever leave you. She just sort of vanished after she was sure we would keep you."

_There was blood everywhere, and a sprawled figure on the concrete floor. His skin was pale, a lifeless white, and his chest wasn't moving. His impossibly thin form was completely still even as Andra began to panic, shaking him, voice hysterical and rising rapidly in pitch. She shrieked at Danny when he approached; he backed off and stared dumbfounded at the scene before him._

"_Jocasta, please, please don't die, I can't… I can't do this all alone… I can't, I can't… Oh, God…"_

Danny didn't even realize he'd zoned out until he was on the floor and his father was picking him up. Jack. God, how many times had Jack been in danger? How many ghosts had come close to killing him? It never occurred to Danny before that all it would take was a single bullet, a single madman, just one accident to take away one of the most important people in his life forever. Everyone complained about their parents, whined about how much they hated them, but the very thought of what he'd lost without even knowing it made Danny want to scream. He'd never felt this kind of love before for his parents, never realized how much he loved them both, how much it would hurt to lose them.

But all the righteous fury in the world wouldn't bring his biological parents back.

It was way too late for that.

* * *

Rashmi had been saved by a glowing ghost boy who wasn't Danny Phantom.

That was news, if only because she was already a gossip topic at Casper High. Dash had been gritting his teeth and taking all kinds of increasingly crude jokes about his choice of women ever since the school got wind of who he was dating. In light of the fact that she had seen a ghost the gossip had, thankfully, shifted off of her at least in part. To say he was a protective boyfriend was an understatement. Dash had explosively broken up with Paulina and the resulting speech about why she sucked and all the reasons why she was not only a crappy girlfriend but a crappy person. Maybe it was the pressure of football season, maybe it was the pressure of Casper High requiring even better grades out of their sports players, maybe he'd just had enough of being hauled around the mall and accused of cheating every week. The point was that a man could never go back to dating a girl after that. He hadn't burned his bridges, he'd set the river on fire entirely and never looked back.

The only time Dash Baxter _wasn't_ a ball of rage was when he had someone who was actually on his side there to defend him. And that was Rashmi. She was the first person in a very long time who had gone out of her way to get close to him. He wasn't sure what the hell that thing was last night that had leapt at him – everything was a blur of silver and black and motion – and he wasn't sure who that ghost was that had teleported in like a silent savior to keep him safe. What he was completely sure of was the way Rashmi had thrown herself bodily in front of him without a second thought like a human shield.

"Well," she'd told him quietly over the phone as he lay in the hospital recovering, "We're certainly the talk of the town now, as if we weren't already. Mira and Jay say that everybody's got their own version of the story. Apparently you fought off five demon hounds with nothing but a stick and my scarf."

"Huh. Thought I'd remember that." Dash was both amused and disturbed. "But that's pretty badass, so tell your sibs not to tell anybody the truth."

"How are you feeling, Blondie?" she asked quietly. "The doctors said something about a broken rib-"

"It's just a fracture. I'm fine. You know me, I'm like a brick wall." His grinned, even though she couldn't see it. "Besides, now we got two ghost kids running around saving people. I'm safer than I've ever been in my life. Especially if you send your attack dog over to guard me again."

"I didn't send Snowy. He broke out. And don't pull the macho card, please. I'm trying to be serious here." He could hear her sigh heavily over the line. "If I hadn't been going to see you, you wouldn't have been outside to get hit. These things don't go into people's homes. This is my fault-"

"Don't even go there, babe," he cut her off sharply. "Don't freak out over something that wasn't anybody's fault. I've lived here for a while and it's like winning the lottery, okay? It's random, so don't have a total girl moment and break down on me."

She snorted, but it was obviously through a few tears. "Macho feeling denying jock."

"New Age hippie child import."

There was a pause as they both smiled. On her end, the school bell rang. "That'll be homeroom. I'll see you as soon as I can. I love you."

Another pause. "I'm not saying it back," he muttered. "My dad's watching."

"It's okay. It's a jock thing," Rashmi replied, getting an indignant 'hey!' out of him. "But I know you do, because if you didn't, you could have a hundred better choices than me."

A more romantic man might've said 'there are no better choices' or 'you were the only choice. Dash being Dash, he said bluntly, "You're not evil. And you're not stupid. And you'd notice if I died and was replaced by a different jock. The choice was pretty freaking obvious from where I'm sitting."

"I love you too," she half-squealed, and hung up before he could object that he was a manly man and manly men did not say I love you.

* * *

"Your parents are letting you skip school?" Tucker asked incredulously. "I wish I could do that. We've got one of those stupid assemblies going on today and it's pretty much guaranteed to be boring."

"Tucker, if they sent me to school, I wouldn't be able to get into my locker today," Danny returned with a tired laugh. "My brain is fried. Call it a mental health day or whatever, but I really need a break. It's a lot to try and take in, you know?"

"You could go to school with your brain fried, Danny. We're having a self esteem up with people thing."

At this, even with his mind officially on overload, the hybrid laughed. Over the FentonPhone, which was basically a tiny green earbud and tiny green speaker, it sounded kind of like static. "Oh, I can see you're just overflowing with enthusiasm. Where's Sam?"

"Present and accounted for," she grumbled over the ambient sound of students talking. "You sue you're going to be okay? We can cut school if you need us; it's not like we're missing anything."

"I'll be fine. Just meet me after school. We need to see the parapsychologist together in case the next memory thing knocks me out again." He sighed. Over on his end, there was a door slam and the sound of a car starting up. "Jazz spent the last two hours lecturing Mom and Dad on how they mishandled everything. That's Jazz-talk for 'I love Danny and think I know everything'. I'm both moved and terrified – oh, crap!"

Sam's voice was alarmed. "Danny, what is it?"

"Either a dog or a polar bear," Danny shot back, and they could hear him shuffling his coat on. "I think it's lost. I'm letting him in and then I'm going to eat my weight in Cinnamon Crunch. Today is officially my mental health day." There was a creak as he opened the back door, and then a whimpering noise. "Come on, Fluffy, get inside. You don't get to dig in the snow when it's twelve degrees out."

"Danny, it's forty outside," Tucker replied, sharing a worried look with Sam. "It's been nice all day. The snow's melting all over town, remember?"

"Tucker, I'm looking the thermostat. It's twelve – oh, crap."

"What is it, another dog?" Sam asked with utmost sarcasm.

"No, it's… a ghost. I think." On the other end, they could hear the dog whimper. "Um, hello? Who are you? Do I… know you?" There was a loud bang as Danny dropped the phone. "Who… what… how did you just…?"

"Danny? _Danny_!" Sam yelled, but the phone had gone dead.

As one, she and Tucker stood and bolted for the doors, school and assemblies be damned.

* * *

**Ending Author's Notes:** Oh thank God, it's over. This chapter was beyond hard to write; it was exhausting to even try to start. The end result may be massively overemotional, but I really had this whole thing pictured out like this in my head.

See, a lot of fanfic has been written for DP, and as a result a lot of it has The Reveal. You know what I mean, that big dramatic YOU ARE ADOPTED! thing that is so emotionally poignant and yet straightforward enough in concept that every writer on Earth jumps on it. But while I have nothing against The Reveal and all the drama that comes with it, I feel that having Danny be angry with his parents doesn't make a lot of sense within the context of _this_ story. Other people's stories, maybe, where Maddie and Jack genuinely worked at hiding it and actively lying to him, but in this scenario they didn't actually do that. They're as lost and confused in this as Danny is and he has nothing to be angry about with them. He has a lot to grieve over, a lot of questions and this giant sense of loss that I probably failed at conveying, but the cliché 'You're not my real parents!' anger is both overdone and completely out of place here. I hate this particular overused reaction specifically because it shoehorns Danny into the role of the angry teenager without any regard for characterization or circumstance.

Not everyone is always going to fly into a rage over The Reveal. Human beings are intricate, complicated things, and no two people are identical, so no, fellow fanfic writers, anger is not an automatically realistic response. Other emotions are just as valid.

Also, for those who think the plot just got resolved rather quickly, I 'd like to note that the plot's just getting started at this point; I just didn't want to drag out The Reveal any longer than I had to because The Reveal is a plot twist that raises just as man questions as it answers. Please don't stop reading just because this chapter had a lot of emotional angsty test. It gets better, I swear! –flails-


	4. Haunting

**To My Reviewers, In The Order They Reviewed:**

**Pterodactyl:** You bring up some good points in my constant beating down on my own work, but in my defense, I can sort of explain this. Every writing class I have ever had has always had a teacher constantly on the students cases over even the tiniest issues. People whose writing made me feel so envious it almost hurt would have their work torn to shreds and every flaw pointed out in extreme detail in front of the entire class. A favored mantra of the writing teachers at my high school was 'never be satisfied with your work – that's what arrogant bad writers do', which has resulted in some mental ramifications for me down the road. One, I'm over cautious when it comes to OCs far beyond the point of reason, which is a flaw I freely admit to, and two, I have somehow turned into one of those annoying whining insecure people incapable of taking a compliment like a grown up. Forgive me; I'm working on it.

Oh, and the comment about the plot beginning was placed there at the behest of my beloved beta, my older brother. You see, a lot of people have the reveal of Danny not being his parents biological child as the finishing plot reveal in a story. Now, while that works very well in some stories I've read, I didn't quite feel like dragging it out any longer than necessary, mostly due to the fact that there's a fine line between suspense and just plain filler. Not wanting to tread that line, I used the same thing others have used effectively as a final sweep for the third chapter and my brother felt that I might want to reassure my readers that it was not, in fact, a sign the fic would conclude with chapter four.

Anyway, I'm beyond flattered that you heaped such high praise on me; it's worth more than a dozen generic reviews, if only because it felt like such a genuine compliment. I really was stunned by that, and I hope my writing can meet your expectations in the future. I know that there's a lot of good fanfic out there you could be reading, and I'm not exactly TV Tropes Fanfic Reccs material, but I'm doing my best and I really appreciate the support.

**Dances With Death:** Yes, I'm aware that numbness and shock is another reaction. I just don't like this odd fandom double standard where girls get emotional and men either get angry or go numb; I feel from personal experience that men have all the emotions women have, they merely express them differently. Hence, emotional Danny. I'm happy to see that you're in agreement that there's more than one way to react to the reveal, however. It's always nice to see someone who's emotionally aware.

**Dragon Dancer 123:** The dog is there partially for the 'oh crap' line being able to be repeated because I have a twisted sense of humor and thought it was funny. Also, animals sense evil in more than a few paranormal stories, so I figured given Danny's love of dogs a dog would be more appropriate than a cat. (He jumped the fence because the Saluki breed is incredible at it, and as the next chapter will mention, he's a Saluki. It's what they _do_.)

I had the reveal (or The Reveal, as my brother calls it) hit the readers out of blue because I wanted it to be as random and out of nowhere to them as it was to Danny. That said, it was intentional from the get go; rereading the flashbacks knowing that, they actually make a bit more sense if you think about it that way.

**Queen Takhsis:** I'm trying not to make it too angsty, but in my defense, anyone who goes through the kind of things that happen in this fic and doesn't angst at all would have to be a sociopath. Hopefully I'll continue to entertain you without going into angst-overload. And thank you for the compliment.

**Invader Johnny:** Well, admittedly, he takes after his biological mother completely; he doesn't resemble his biological father in this story at all. If you compared his adopted father to his first one, Jack wins by a landslide in the looks department. That said, I've seen many cases of children strongly resembling a single parent, so hopefully your willing suspension of disbelief won't be stretched too much. I mean, in the DP universe a lot of black people have teal eyes and purple is a far more common eye color than it ever has been in real life, so surely 'he looks like his mom' is an acceptable statement here.

**Serac:** Thank you for reviewing all three chapters individually. It's a nice touch, given how most people would just save time by reading the whole of what I've got up and reviewing. That said, I'm interested by all the ways people keep interpreting events, and yours would make a fantastic plot if only I had thought of it before. It's too late to use that with what I've got written; however, I am definitely filing that away as a plot bunny for the future.

* * *

_Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of a readiness to die. _– G.K. Chesterton

* * *

Danny was fairly sure he screamed.

Everything ached, and he did mean _everything_, from his heart beating in his chest to the smallest movement. He was drained of all energy. It was all he could do to stand back and watch. In front of him was a world of colors, dark grays and purples mixing with strands of bright yellow. The fog and smoke danced and twisted until they formed recognizable images, a house with dark wooden walls and intricate golden paint now faded and peeling, a place with long boarded up windows and the smell of dust and rot all around them. He inhaled very slowly, laboriously, and twitched involuntarily. _Home._ He could see the familiar striped wallpaper in the next room alongside a dark green couch he felt strangely sure he'd seen before.

Two footsteps in front of him were all his warning before the ghost boy appeared out of thin air to stand beside him. All the colors of the world were strangely faded and muted, the world blurry as if viewed in a haze, yet the ghost was distinctly clear. His hair was both black and brown, a mixture of different colored chunks, or perhaps it was a trick of the light as it seemed to change when he stepped into the dim shafts of light from a poorly boarded up window. His skin was different than when Danny had seen him in the yard; it was now deeply tanned, and his facial features gave no clue as to an ethnicity. With a short, snub nose on an angular heart shaped face, he would probably have been creepy enough alive. As a ghost he was even more so. Luckily, Danny was very desensitized to weird things. Between his parents and his double life, you had to get up pretty early in the morning to freak _him_ out.

"Where are we?" Danny asked, feeling groggy. "And who are you?"

"We're in Pharos City, about fourteen years ago." He tilted his head, eyes of Isabelline glinting in the light. "There's something you need to know about this. But no one believes a kid. That's why we're here."

"So you figured you'd just show me. Um, okay, that makes sense, I guess…" Danny managed to get to his feet, although the action was like running a marathon. He noticed that the kid hadn't answered his question. He didn't press the matter. Ember had told him once that she'd made up her name since, after her death, she no longer remembered it. She'd been fairly drunk, but he had no reason to believe she was lying, and that kind of scared him quite frankly. "How are you doing this?"

"I'm not allowed to answer that." His face was permanently devoid of emotion, until a heavy sigh worked its way out of him. "I just want to rest. They'll let me once this is over."

Danny furrowed his brow. It could be the pounding headache, or the fact that he currently felt his heartbeat in his head, or maybe this kid just wasn't making sense. He was voting for the latter, personally. "Who are 'they'? Rest where?"

Once again, he only answered one question. "They're letting me go to Afterworld soon. They promised."

"You, um, I don't mean to be a jerk, it's just… how old are you? Or were you, I guess." The teenager chuckled darkly. "Ghosts and grammar don't mix. Sorry. I can't brain today, I have the dumb."

The boy smiled, a small, shy expression. "I was, um, am, seven. Or eight. I don't remember. I'm really sure it was one of those, though." His smile faded. "I'm not supposed to talk to people. It's not very professional." He said that last word slowly, as if trying not to trip over it. "Sorry. I'm just trying to be good."

Danny's reply, had he been thinking of one (he wasn't, his train of thought was dedicated to how weird his life was) was stopped by the fact that the kid vanished after that. Left in an empty room with his thoughts, the hybrid tried to piece things together in his head. Ghosts were involved in helping him solve his parents' murder. Someone had been after them and he hadn't a clue why or who. His parents (other parents, technically) were in danger in Amity Park from the same evil force. He was clueless as to how to stop this from continuing, clueless in crime fighting, had no knowledge of the paranormal outside of ghosts, and was now stuck in the past. His face met his palm as he groaned. This was beyond not good. This was hopeless. He was beginning to feel that rising heat that came when desperate fear and righteous anger met. Everything was out of his control. Danny Phantom was not fond of that.

As Danny Fenton, his life was always more or less dull. He liked it that way. As Danny Phantom he had responsibilities. Maybe technically they weren't his – no one had assigned him this job of catching ghosts or saving people, but morally speaking he'd had to do it. He worried too much about people, cared for those around him too deeply to just sit back and do nothing. Danny could never help anyone in Fenton form. In Phantom form he felt a moral compulsion, something deep down inside him, tell him to do everything he could for the world around him. These people were good people. Amity Park had a low crime rate, good cops, a loving community full of people who were honest and hard working. He could never have stepped back and watched them suffer once he got his powers. Anyone who messed with any of them had to go through him first.

Then he'd found out that he'd had parents, another set of them. They had been beaten down by Pharos City, a place where crime was out of control and the world was falling apart. Things were down there that couldn't even be comprehended by the rest of the state. There were crimes there that made this case look like nothing. Only in Pharos would a cannibalistic serial killer result in bored shrugs. It was a place of no mercy where the gangs had long run everything and the police were both severely outnumbered and routinely slaughtered on the streets. No one cared about a poor family with a baby boy. That was what made Danny furious. His parents – his _parents_, who had given birth to him and loved him dearly – had been ripped apart and no one gave a damn. It was like losing Maddie and Jack with the added horror of no one caring other than a handful of his friends, who only cared in a vague, abstract sense.

When he saw the bodies in the ally with Tomor, they had been faceless, nameless statistics. When he realized with a sense of horror that they were in the same situation as his parents guilt twisted his heart and made him want to scream in frustration. Anger was pulsing through him, not at the world for not caring, not at his parents for lying to him, but at himself. He should never have let this happen. He shouldn't have let things get this far in his city. _His_ city was different. It wasn't Pharos. There were people here who cared. They were good, honest people, and he'd let them down. He was a failure. He was lost.

He was, therefore, staying put if only because he needed as much information as possible to catch the killer.

No one messed with his city and his family and got away with it.

* * *

Oyuun Tomor was not having a very good day.

It wasn't that he hated Vlad Masters, not really. Tomor had seen more than a few corrupt mayors in his time. Before he came to settle down in Amity Park, he'd lived in New Jersey for many years and worked some extremely tough beats. He'd even spent a year in Pharos City, which was about eleven and a half months than most cops there tended to last. He was no stranger to corrupt people and could grit his teeth and get along with them pretty well for the most part. The problem was that Vlad was so obviously fake. He was completely transparent with his claims of innocence and bourgeois accent. He was also rich, the kind of rich where the son of an immigrant police chief was as far removed from his world as the sun was from the ocean. Yet he insisted on trying to play pretend they were great buddies for the sake of appearances.

Tomor didn't give much of a damn about appearances. He had more than enough scars on his body that proved he'd rather do the right thing than let someone else do it. He had a modest house, an unremarkable car, and dressed mostly in grays and blacks. Vlad wore things that were custom tailored, owned five cars that Tomor knew of and had two houses. All of this would've been fine Tomor if the man hadn't been so flashy, blatant, arrogant and proud of himself. There was nothing wrong with being rich. There were plenty of things wrong with being rich and unable to stop bringing it up. So while normally Tomor would maintain a pleasant neutral expression while making small talk, when to came to Mayor Impaler he didn't even try.

Vlad had once made an empty threat about Tomor's job security. The Mongolian man had replied coldly that every single employee Vlad fired from the Amity Park Police Department had been non-white and if that got leaked to the press, well, he couldn't be held responsible for that. And while no one would notice if some cocaine were to go missing from the evidence locker, Tomor had continued with a happy childish smile and a completely upbeat tone of voice, everybody would notice if it just happened to appear in Vlad's house and a police officer just happened upon the scene. The upper class man had gaped at him as Tomor strode away with his trademark deadpan expression. Ever since then they'd been in midst of an increasingly strained public relations affair. On the one hand, Vlad felt it was important that he appear to be friends with the Chief of Police. On the other hand, Tomor felt that Vlad could be swapped out with one of Tomor's beta fish and no one would notice any difference. It was no secret among those who knew Tomor that he felt the other man was hiding something and would one day end up in jail for something.

And on top of being corrupt and creepy, Vlad had the annoying tendency to call Tomor by his first name. This may not seem like as bad of an offense as the above, but Vlad butchered Oyuun until it was unrecognizable. It was worse than nails scraping on a chalkboard. Even telling Vlad that the only people allowed to say that name were women in the throes of ecstasy and state judges was not enough to discourage this offense, probably because Vlad hated the non bribe taking workaholic as much as he hated him.

"Oyuun!" Vlad chirped. "What a pleasant surprise!"

"Masters," Tomor returned stoically. "I'd snark at you, but unlike you, I work, so I'm very busy. Just here to give you the legally required update on this case and then get back to work."

"My, aren't you a busy bee?" The mayor replied with his best charming smile. "So kind to stop by and do it yourself."

"I thought I might stop by and see if you actually have a heart." He sighed when Vlad narrowed his eyes at him. "I've met Jack Fenton a few times. He's overbearing as hell, wide as a barn, has a man crush on you for reasons I can't fathom… and he's got a kid that, for reasons that are none of your business, may be a target for our local madman."

Vlad was on his feet in an instant; it might have been a trick of the light, but Tomor could've sworn he saw the man's eyes _glow_ for a moment. "What?"

"It's complicated. Basically, though, this guy targets families, and Danny's had a run in with him in the past. Serial killers don't like unfinished business. They're a bit like the mob in that aspect," Tomor added as an afterthought, "And everyone says you're the Fenton's family friend. You never shut up about your power, Masters. Power corrupts absolutely is all well and good as a phrase, but I'd like to think that maybe there's something human left in you."

"Have you alerted the FBI?" Vlad said quickly, expression thoughtful and stormy. "Have they taken any precautions? What have they been doing?"

Tomor barely held in a snide remark about the man's inability to follow the biggest case his town had had in years. "They're not too concerned. Pharos City is a drain on the state's resources and the government's as a whole. With the recession in full swing the crime rate has spiked in so many areas that they're stretched too thin to give half a damn about some small city with only one murderer in it. The only reason they humored us with a few agents is because the murders have crossed state lines."

For once, genuine emotion was on the other man's face. He wasn't just angry, he was furious. Silently, the police chief upgraded his opinion of Vlad from complete monster to jerk with some humanity in tact. "Fine," the rich man ground out, each word dripping with venom. "If they want to ignore this, let them. More glory for you when you catch the man." Before Tomor could ask what he meant, he continued, "I'm donating money from my personal funds to the Amity Park police department. What do you need?"

"In a word, manpower. We have the funds, we have the guns, we even have the expertise on hand, but we just don't have enough people. This isn't Detroit, Masters. We're not equipped to handle this. Amity's a paranormal hotbed of an oddly specific kind. We have ghosts, nothing else. Human depravity is something we're not used to addressing because with Danny Phantom we've never had to." Tomor's fists clenched. "I hate – and I do mean _hate_ – asking you for this, but I need your help. Do I have it?"

"Unconditionally," Vlad said without a trace of his normal animosity. "I will not stand by while families are slaughtered. Work out a detailed list of what you need and you'll have it by tomorrow."

"Tomorrow?" Tomor asked incredulously.

There was nothing kind in Vlad's smile. "In America, we have a saying: the lack of money is the root of all evil. I expect that tons of it should therefore be effective at stamping it out."

Tomor kept quiet. There was something lethal and potent in the other man's voice that left no room for argument.

* * *

The difference between Danny's own memories and an actual replay of the past was very clear.

Jazz had sat down with him last night and explained it. In essence, the simple version boiled down to a small child's inability to recall details. Visual learners at that age, children were very good at recalling images (Andra's long hair, the dark eyes of his father, a strange shadowy thing that lurked in his memories that he couldn't yet identify). The problem was details were either absent or better recalled than important content. Everything past a certain age, even with the best hypnotherapists on staff, were images and fragments. The problem was simply that children didn't have complicated thoughts and thus anything they didn't understand either got blocked out from memory or left a confusing jumble of contradictions in their head. Danny's notebook full of bits of memory were proof enough of how much of a mess it could be.

The flashbacks themselves were always brief, always very devoid of details, and completely outside of context. What order they happened in, what time of day, and where were gone simply because a four year old hardly cared about those kinds of things. Assuming, that was, that he was actually four years old. Andra hadn't been in any state to tell the Fenton family anything other than that he was a wonderful child who needed protection. She knew they'd made money from their patents; she could see in their large house. They were kind people who fed her and had a wonderful daughter they clearly doted on. She gave Danny away without even telling them his actual name, let alone his birthday or age. There was no paperwork saying he existed, so adoption was legally sound and easy, if a bit paperwork intensive. By then she'd slipped off into the night without a word.

Between his age and the trauma of it all it was only the blatant and graphic trigger that was the murders that had enabled him to remember anything. Unfortunately, whatever freaky power had left him in the past had left him just as cognizant and aware as he was in the present. He was unable to touch anything or be heard by the cat that passed by, but mentally he was all there. At first it didn't seem so bad, and he wondered if there'd been a mistake. He saw a normal family, albeit one that was a bit on the poor side. The build was run down, the father slept on a sofa to let his children have the bedrooms, and there was very little furniture. Still, after a few minutes of Danny wandering the place the man got up and made his family dinner. He was a tall man, a police officer in the uniform draped on the chair was any indication, and he looked exhausted. His skin was dark, just a shade above Tucker's, his hair prematurely gray, but his dark gold eyes were kind and he smiled warmly at his sleepy eyed daughter when she entered the tiny kitchen.

"Riri, are you awake?" he asked, and his voice had an accent Danny tentatively placed as South African. "Blink twice if you are." He grinned at her when she looked hazily at him. "Go get your brothers, please. And you might want to take the pants off your head."

"It's a hat," the five year old informed him, and she walked off with a huff of indignation.

Danny felt his stomach twist. Pharos City. The murders. He couldn't watch this. He wouldn't be here if something horrible wasn't about to happen. He wanted to look away, to try not to watch things go wrong, and he couldn't. This man was just like his dad, setting a little piece of fudge on each plate for his kids' dessert, warming up leftovers and making salad for kids who, like clockwork, all whined about the veggies. There was something undeniably intimate about watching a family in their home. He saw the kids lunge for the fudge, he saw the father struggling to make a little bit of food go a long way, and he saw a house that was well kept and extremely clean despite the obvious poverty. With a pang of horror, he saw that one of the children was the ghost boy that had led them here. The only thing that kept Danny from running was his physical incapability.

The door burst open. "Ataro?" a drunken voice slurred. "Ataro, where the hell are you?"

"Get out, now," he ordered his children, rising rapidly to his feet, but a woman was already in the room. Danny could smell the alcohol on her.

Ataro tensed and stepped forward as if he was a human shield between the woman and her own children. Danny could see both of them in their children; the faces were a mix of both of their features, the mixed hair color a trait of their mother and their height a product of both parents. For a apprehensive moment everyone was quiet and frozen. Then the woman's face crumpled and she wrapped her arms around her husband, burying her face in his neck. Her sobs were audible from Danny's position across the room.

"They – they said there was a cop down town – ripped apart – they said he was black – I thought, I thought, I-" she sobbed disjointedly. "Oh God, I was so scared. I'm so glad you're okay."

Ataro wrapped his arms around her and rocked her gently. "It's alright. It wasn't my beat or my patrol. I was across town. I'm safe. It's okay; it's not my branch of the police handling it. I'm fine, okay? Calm down, you're scaring the children."

She wiped quickly at her face, dual colored hair falling into her face briefly. "I know, I know. I just can't help it. I know I may fight with you, and I run off at the mouth, but I love you and if the last words I said to you were 'I hate you' I… I just…"

"_Breathe_, Angie," he instructed her firmly. "Sit down, I just reheated dinner. It's okay. How'd the job interview go?"

"Bad. It was, well, I don't have swear words strong enough." Angie inhaled sharply. "I'm sorry. I don't need to rush in having a freak out like this."

He leaned over and kissed her gently on the forehead before sitting down beside her. "It's just a way of expressing love. I know what I would do if it were me in your position. For all the things I've said, I love you just like you love me-"

"You're not gonna kiss, are you?" Riri asked, sounding horrified.

Ataro grinned. "Maaaaaybe."

Riri made gagging noises and put her hands over her eyes. Her brothers took this opportunity to put their salads on her plate and high five each other. The parents laughed, and unknown to them, outside, something stirred. Danny could see it in the shadows. He leapt forward out of instinct before remembering that he wouldn't be able to warn them or stop this anyway. Knees knocking, eyes wide, he could only watch as three pale, yellowy _things_ entered the house and crept through the darkened hallway. Danny couldn't see them clearly until they were nearly on top of the unsuspecting family. They had large, bulbous heads that were far too large for their stick thin bodies; their eyes were tiny almond shape pink eyes devoid of iris or pupils. They walked on the tips of their clawed toes, their silver claws glinting in the light of the single light bulb in the kitchen/living room combo. Nose and ears practically non-existent holes, their thin mouths looked tiny yet opened up to huge, hideous jaws twice the size of a human's, filled with two rows of razor like teeth.

_Red on silver. Red blood on silver, glinting on the floor as Danny screamed, a figure he couldn't remember exactly._

"Oh, God, no," he whispered, and then the things lunged.

It wasn't a fight, it was a slaughter. He couldn't look away. He couldn't breathe. He screamed, though, in vain. Heads were crushed, bodies were thrown and broken, skin was ripped open like wrapping paper being ripped off a present. The noises they were making were a sickening mixture of screeches and clicks, half-notes that seemed almost a language. Danny shook and fell to his knees. Seconds became nightmarish hours in his head, and then the struggle was over; injured and dying, the humans lay spread out on the wooden floors without the blessing of death or unconsciousness. Lightning fast, the creatures huddled over them. Danny knew what was coming and still screamed when they began to bite down on them.

"GET ME OUT!" he screamed at whatever power was letting him see this. "LET ME OUT LET ME OUT LET ME OUT!" He clamped his hands down over his ears and began to shake uncontrollably.

_There is blood everywhere, absolutely everywhere. It is soaking into his jeans, into his skin; not dried yet, it congealed in globs and sticky dark pools all around him. There is a figure in the midst of the blood standing over one of _them_, those awful monsters, holding a knife and looking both drained and triumphant. He has hair the color of snow, eyes dark as night and a voice so intense and quiet it commands the attention of everyone around him. Even as Andra asks him if he was okay and grabs Danny, pulling him into her arms and holding him so tightly it hurt, he is talking over her._

"_Jocasta, we need to move-"_

_He cuts her off. "No, we don't. You two do. I'm staying."_

"_What?" She stares at him with wide eyes. "Are you insane? No one can kill them. This was just a fluke."_

"_No. No, it wasn't." Jocasta grips his knife tighter. "The eyes. It's the eyes. It always has been and we never realized it. And sunlight! It's not just a matter of stealth, it's lethal! I can do this, Andra. You just need to get this information out there. You need to tell the others and you need to get to safety."_

_Andra looks at him incredulously and angrily. "And you?" she demands._

"_I'm the flame for the moths. They know I know. They think you're an idiot I'm sleeping with. You can leave. I have to stay to keep them at bay." He grabs his coat off the floor and put it on, ignoring the blood on it. "This isn't up for debate. If nothing else, do it for the kid."_

"_No, no, I won't-"_

_He grips her shoulders and steps closer. "Listen to me, Andra Elizabeth. Every day of your life you have been selfish as hell. Your life has always revolved around what you wanted. What I am asking you now is to grow up and think about the rest of the world. You have a son. He. Is. A. _Toddler_." He says each word with particular emphasis. "If you don't leave the only family you have left on this planet is going to _die_. Listen to me for once in your life. Leave, and never, ever come back."_

"_You're my family too," Andra says weakly, in a choked sort of voice. "Please, please stay safe." She hands him something that Danny doesn't see in the dim light. "Keep it with you."_

"_I'm coming back, An-An," he whispers softly, fiercely. "I promise. And I don't lie."_

_She turns and walks away. Only her son hears her whisper, "Yes you do."_


	5. Eldritch

**To My Reviewers In Order Blah Blah Blah You Know The Drill:**

**Invader Johnny:** I have an answer for that question. It's just that the answer will make things worse and raise more questions… and it's addressed in this chapter anyway. Oh, and Vlad's just being protective of Danny and Maddie. He's still harboring that stalker crush on her, after all, and even if Danny's rejected him, Vlad's got some clingy I-want-a-surrogate-family issues that run pretty deep. In short: do not screw with the people he obsesses over. He's got that lovely mental double standard a lot of people have where it's fine if he does it and horrible if others do it.

**Dances With Death:** Answers are coming, in spades. It's just that a lot of them fall under what TV Tropes would refer to as The Awful Truth.

**Pterodactyl:** I think my problem is I tend to see only my flaws, not what I'm doing right. However, that's just how I am even outside of fanfic, so it might just be a me thing. I'm trying not to be one of those obnoxious compliment seeking whiners who runs around flaunting their best work and talking loudly about how bad it is, though. It's just hard to convey 'I think my writing is okay and am not an arrogant asshat in love with my own work' without coming across like that.

**Queen Takhsis:** You know, some part of me is immensely pleased when people tell me they can't see where this is going. I'm glad that, though there are hints there, it isn't a transparent plot. Writing this thing is like writing a very personal and emotional kind of mystery, and mysteries tend to either work really well or be terrible without much of a middle ground. (Also, I'm glad Tomor is actually likable. I know most people have young OCs, but I kind of like the middle aged snarky cop I've created.)

**Dragon Dancer 123:** I'm sort of surprised whenever people say my writing got them to cry. I was worried the obvious flaws in the murdered family would result in a lack of sympathy for them; it's kind of nice to see that I was wrong.

**Martel:** Dexter's just here as a shout out to that series; he's not relevant to plot or playing a big part in it. It's a TV Troper thing, we always have shout outs, probably because we are to nerds what nerds are to normal people. Sorry, I guess I should have clarified that. And actually, the first Dexter books weren't paranormal in any sense. That only happened in one book, which is considered out of continuity for the fandom. The TV series diverged from the books by keeping certain characters alive and changing the order of events for the first season. After that, it becomes its own story separate from the books. –pause- Aaaand now I am a total nerd in your eyes, aren't I? Anyway, I thank you for your compliments, even if you're having one of those days where you can't focus enough to read. I get those from time to time too, so I understand, and I think it's really nice of you to take time to try despite that and leave a review. Thanks.

Also, I'd like to apologize to everyone if this chapter jumps the shark, so to speak, but everything has a reason for its inclusion and this has been my plan from the beginning. This is maybe the darkest thing I've ever written, bar none, and I'm sure there's plenty of people who will get annoyed with the constant despair and just leave before the conclusion. To them, all I can say is I'm sorry, I really tried not to go too dark with this. This is the light hearted, heavily edited version of this chapter, and I swear it'll get better later.

* * *

_The genius of the hole: no matter how long you spend climbing out, you can still fall back down in an instant._ – Max Payne

* * *

"Why do I keep passing out?" Danny grumbled loudly. "Every freaking hour it seems like I'm out cold. What am I, the neighborhood floor inspector?" There was a pause as he opened his eyes and looked around. "Where'd the dog go?"

"He's hiding in the kitchen, under the table," the ghost boy said sadly. "He's scared of me. All puppies are. I think they know I'm dead."

Danny raised a hand to silence him. "Yeah. I gotta go puke. We can talk afterwards."

Thankfully, his parents were down in the lab and didn't get to hear or see his reaction. After gargling, gagging, and wiping his face off with a washcloth, he staggered out of the bathroom to find the dog from before whimpering at him. The white colored dog, whose legs were astoundingly long, followed him around with wide eyes. _That dog looks how I feel_, Danny noted darkly. _Maybe animals _do _have a sixth sense._ He looked pale and he felt like he'd been in a fight. Honestly, all he wanted was to curl up in his bed and sleep for the next five hours until his parapsychologist appointment… which he might have to cancel, seeing as everything had been spelled out in all its glorifying, horrifying details to him. He didn't want any more memories popping up. He was going to need therapy as it was just after that last little adventure. But he needed someone versed in the paranormal to tell him what he was up against in detail.

This was going to be a very long day and an even longer week. He ran his fingers through his hair to flatten it and turned to see the ghost boy standing a little bit away, looking bashful.

"I'm sorry mister Phantom," he said softly. "I had to. I really didn't want to, but if I don't do as I'm told I don't get into Afterworld."

"And what, exactly, is that?" Danny asked, growing both annoyed and confused. "Is anyone going to explain anything to me in plain English?"

"Yes, I am," a voice said from behind him. The hybrid spun on his heel and raised a glowing green hand to the intruder on sheer instinct. This got him a huff and some eye rolling. "Oh, please. As if you wouldn't be dead already if I wanted to kill you? Humans are such violent creatures. Well, if you can be said to qualify as one of them."

Every word dripped arrogance and he spoke with such haughtiness that Vlad seemed like a humble man by comparison. He held his head high, looking down his nose at the world around him. He was, Danny decided quickly, the most arrogant douchebag he'd ever met, and that included Dash Baxter. He was also extremely beautiful. With eyes such a light, bright silver they were nearly white, hair the dark blue of the desert sky and skin so pale Sam would die of jealousy, he had a sort of indescribable charisma. He stood nearly seven feet tall, and was wearing a sleeveless dark blue trenchcoat with intricate gold swirls on it. Underneath that, despite the cold, there was only a black shirt, dark gray slacks and black shoes that didn't look like they'd keep the winter weather out. Speaking of which, Danny could now see his breath in front of his face _inside_ despite the door being shut.

"Why is it so cold in here?" he asked point blank. He had enough questions to fill up a book, but that seemed like as good of a starting place as any. "And, I'm sorry, I didn't catch your name?"

"It's a side effect of benevolent ghosts and spirits," the stranger replied. "This way paranormally savvy humans will not be fooled by shapeshifters impersonating us. The form can be faked, mostly, but the cold is impossible to replicate." He made a brief, stiff, obviously begrudging bowing motion to Danny. "I am Baxael. I'm here to help you. Normally we don't operate this way – we'd just let the ghosts do it, as they're easier for your kind to accept – but the balance of the world is starting to be put in jeopardy, and you have proven yourself to have some decency despite your eldritch nature. We're here to get you to prevent the calamities of the future."

"Love you too," Danny quipped back, eyes narrowing. "You keep saying we. We, who? What are you, exactly? Also, why the hell did you use a seven year old to do your dirty work? And-"

The doorbell rang, no doubt interrupting the snide comment Danny could practically _feel_ forming on the man's mouth. This being Sam and Tucker, who were such close family friends they had their own toothbrushes in the Fenton household and a mountain of their stuff strewn across Danny's room, they burst in without waiting for anyone to get the door. Baxael snarled, his eyes glinting in the light. The ghost kid hid under the nearest table, where the dog was already trying to cower. It was crowded but neither was willing to get any closer to this drama than was absolutely necessary. Sam whipped out the Fenton Thermos and pointed it directly at the strange in Danny's house, who rolled his eyes and shook his head, muttering something that sounded suspiciously like 'oh, _humans_'.

"Danny, who is this guy?" Sam demanded, looking uneasy.

"Ah, the other eldritch of Amity Park. And she brought a black sidekick!" Baxael's voice was mocking. "Fantastic. Now all we need is an Asian human in a wheelchair and we'll be truly politically correct, won't we?" He sighed. "I am Baxael, an agent of the Afterworld. I am here to educate the hybrid child and what he's gotten himself neck deep into. I suppose you'll want to tag along. Ugh, humans are such clingy creatures at this age. I can practically smell your hormones." He shuddered. "My job is a nightmare. Well, out with it, mortals. Do you want in on this?"

"I…" Danny interjected softly, looking between the faces of his friends, "I can't let you two come with me. This is bad, very bad. I want you to get out, now."

Their faces registered their shock before they found the words for it. Then Sam burst out, "Are you insane? Everything's going crazy and you just want us to leave you alone? You can't do this by yourself, you need us!"

"Yeah!" Tucker said heatedly, taking a half step forward. "I'd rather be shot than leave my best friend alone in a city with a serial killer-"

"Guys," the raven haired teen whispered, voice breaking. All eyes in the room were on him and his serious, unreadable expression. "I need," he started, and then he took a deep breath and said in a voice five times more intense and stern, "I need you to leave. You two need to stay safe. Go somewhere sunny and stay away from the major population centers, ditch school to hand out Sam's cousin down in Florida or something, but you can't stay here until this over. I can not and I _will_ not lose anymore people to this monster." With a grim smile, he added, "This isn't up for debate."

The two friends looked between Danny and each other for a moment, eyes uncertain and expressions baffled. Slowly, as he continued to stand firm, they seemed to battle this out in their minds. This was, Sam sensed, not the same Danny she'd always known. All his life Danny had been goofy and he used that as a shield between him and other people. This was just pure open, honest, brutal seriousness. It was disconcerting, very much not his own personality, yet his eyes blazed with the intensity of his feelings. He really wanted them to leave. Tucker tried to comprehend why his friend was doing this, going solo when for so long they'd been a team of three supporting each other through everything. All this time Danny had refrained from ever playing up the severity of the situation; if anything, he could be too light hearted sometimes. If things were bad enough for this, then…

"Okay," the black boy said softly, aquamarine eyes never leaving Danny's. "We'll back off. But if you need us, we're one call away."

"I know," he nodded in reply. He turned his azure eyes on Sam and quirked an eyebrow. "Sam, please. I need you to answer me. Promise me you'll leave and, no matter what happens, don't come back. Don't ever come back until you know for certain that it's completely safe. Please."

"Danny, what are you planning to do?" she asked bluntly. "Do you even know? What's your plan?"

"Well, it depends on whether or not Baxael from the Unpronounceable Land Of Wonders decides to help me out, but either today or tomorrow, I'm tracking down the monsters that are killing people and I'm taking them out. If I have to die trying it'll be a few less the world has to deal with." His fists clenched tightly at his sides. "They have to be stopped. And I have to try. Until I stop them, though, all of you are in danger. My house has paranormal security on it the likes of which most paranoid schizophrenics might say is too much. You two have nothing. Please, let's not argue about this. I just… I'm just getting sick of everything getting worse with each passing hour. Please, Sam, promise me you'll leave."

Their eyes locked. For a moment she was silent. Heavily, she sighed, and nodded. "I promise. But if you need me, call me, and no matter where I am, I'll be here in a heartbeat."

Danny watched their retreating forms with worried eyes and slowly turned to the paranormal being in front of him. Baxael was inhuman and Danny could sense it, knowing it instinctively without reason. His disdain had been written all over his face a moment before. Mortals were beneath him, after all, and Danny knew he was supposed to be angry with that sentiment, but he wasn't. Something inside him had changed, some kind of innocence had been shattered rapidly in the past twenty four hours, and he stood before the spirits a new person, closer to man than kid. He looked into those impossibly, inhumanly light eyes, and he saw that he'd caught the man off guard with his actions.

"I know you don't like me," Danny started coldly, "But I really don't have time for your pettiness right now. I don't know what it is about my existence you find so offensive. I don't care. There are people out there who are in danger of death in the worst way possible, and right now you're the only person who seems to know everything that's going on. So here's what's going to happen: you're going to explain what those things are, you're going to tell me how I can stop them, and then I'm calling in all the help I can, because no one is going to die like that in my city. And whatever prejudices and hang ups you're currently using to help you feel better about yourself, you're going to shove them down and act like an adult for five seconds. Once this is over you can go around calling people eldritch and all that crap, but this isn't play time. Am I clear?"

Baxael's face twisted in something like shock before a sad smile broke out on his face. "You remind me of a human I used to know." His face returned to its normal arrogance, though there was an undercurrent of deeper pain in his voice. "Why does your kind always insist on getting themselves killed? Why do you have to try to play at being noble when it's so lethal in this life? It's foolishness, Daniel. You could have used their help."

The teenager gave him a glare, biting back whatever smart mouthed comments he had. "They're my family. I have to keep them safe. Now, what are you here for?"

"To answer your questions, and show you the Source." It was an automatic response, said with little thought or introspection. "I am here to help you end the bloodbath of demons on this Earth."

"Two things," Danny replied with a trace of his old snark, "One, what does 'the source' mean, and two, does this mean those things are demons?"

"The Source is usually called Oulixes, but with so many languages present on Earth and so many religions who have their own names for it – even if they got the definition wrong in some cases – we in the Afterworld have learned to just go with the most general name possible. Hence, the Source. It is where all evil and darkness seep forth from, the home of all that which you call monsters. Every sighting of hell hounds, every Native American legend of shapeshifters who cannot be trusted, every haunting with no ghost that can be excised is their doing. You are currently locked in battle with some of their spawn, called the Nokta," Baxael explained, sparing the ghost boy and the dog a glance. "However, my kind are notoriously bad at dealing with mortals. We don't feel things the same way you do and we do not express things the way you express them. This is why we send the spirits of humans to make the initial contact unless things are truly dire."

With a gentle smile, Danny held out his hand to pull out the boy from under the table. He accepted and his skin was so cold Danny wanted to rip his hand away from the kid's, but he didn't let it show on his face. He looked at Baxael with expectant eyes. "So he can go on, now, right? You're letting him into… what was it he kept calling it… Afterworld?"

"Yes, he can. Afterworld is just what it sounds like, the world after you die. Well, aside from the Ghost Zone, which was created solely to house those who weren't ready to move on and weren't willing to help." He sighed. "Perhaps it would've been kinder to just force them into the Afterworld, but the rules and regulations were made long before my time." He looked down at the pale ghost child. "Well, Ayo? Do you want to leave?"

"Um, is mister Phantom going to be okay without me? I can stay if you guys want." He offered Danny a shy smile. "You remind me of my daddy."

"Well, that warms the cockles of my heart, but no, we'll be fine by ourselves." The raven haired boy smiled affectionately at him and ruffled his hair. "Be sure to learn how to play a harp when you get there. It's tradition."

"M'kay." And with a wave of Baxael's hand, he vanished.

There was an awkward silence as the two not-quite-humans stared at each other. After a moment Danny motioned for the other man to keep going, and pulled up two chairs from the table for them to sit in. Baxael sat stiffly, as if the action did not come naturally to him, and looked Danny over with an unreadable, oddly blank expression.

"You are not like the other humans, Daniel. You are kind, and that complicates matters a great deal. Cruel men can be counted on to do things once it's been shown that the situation directly affects them, which was the whole point of showing you the murders of that family; when someone thinks that they themselves or their loved ones are targets, they can be counted on to go into the fight. When someone is kind they let their heart overrule their head and their actions make increasingly less sense the more they care for others. Your mother was told to leave the city. She chose to stay for a day to take on the Nokta with her own plan, which nearly got you killed and _did_ get others killed. She did it out of a desire to keep her loved ones safe. It's an altruism that many humans have that can be very destructive if left unchecked. It cost me a… a very dear friend, one of the few humans I ever cared for… He did not, would not let me intervene because he knew I could be killed, and he cared more about my well being than his own…"

"Jocasta…" Danny mumbled thoughtfully.

Baxael reacted to the name as if he'd been struck, jerking to the side before standing bolt upright. "How do you know that name?" he demanded angrily. "How do you know him?"

"I…" he blinked, stunned. "He… ever since I saw the bodies yesterday I've been having flashbacks and… he's in them. I remember him, and Andra. They're my parents, right?"

The otherworldly man closed his eyes as if pained, inhaling sharply. "So that's what you think? I see. Who… who told you that? Did you just assume… Oh, Daniel, I owe you my apologies. I went into this trying desperately not to get attached, but this is just too much." His eyes opened. They were no longer sneering and cold, now filled with pity. "All you life no one ever told you. I had no idea. You poor eldritch, you must be so confused, living among idiotic mortals who cannot hope to ever know. I thought you were faking humanity to keep them all fooled-"

"You're not making any sense!" Danny interjected, feeling a growing icy panic overtake him. "Back up! Your job is to explain things, so tell me: what are you talking about?"

"Daniel, Andra was your mother. Jocasta was one of her boyfriends. But he is not your father. Your father is – or should I say, _was_ – a Nokta." He hung his head sadly. "You are an eldritch, a child of a mixed union. I… I thought you knew. Andra – when she died – told us you'd been informed-"

"_I don't wanna be me, I don't wanna be me," he whispers, curling up in his new bed all alone, wishing his mommy was here. "Let me wake up and not be me."_

"_-kill the poor eldritch," David says coldly, turning away-_

_-there is blood everywhere, and Andra is screaming, grabbing his hands and pulling him back, kneeling in the puddle he's laying in-_

_-he's waking up from another nightmare that feels like a sweet dream, all violence and freedom so true, so unlike anything he's ever felt-_

_-like waking from sleep he looks around and does not recognize the faces around him or who he is, but he feels so much more peaceful now that it doesn't matter. He smiles and reaches for Maddie's hand-_

"No, no, NO!" He shoved himself to his feet, backing away and sending the chair crashing to the ground. "That's not – that can't – I'm not evil, I'm not, I know I'm not, please, there has to be a mistake, I wouldn't – I couldn't – I'm Danny Phantom, I'm a hero, for God's sake, I-" He was shaking his head, turning pale, feeling his weak knees buckle and shake uncontrollably underneath him. Baxael watched him sadly. "This isn't true, this isn't real, I can't possibly remember anything that far back, they're all lies, this basic psychology…"

"Nokta remember earlier than humans do. They're always significantly thinner and more boney than human beings. There's a bit of a melanin deficiency, so you probably can't tan. Daniel, you have all the signs-"

"No!" he shouted, not caring if his parents heard as he moved towards the door, shoving his feet into his shoes without pause. "This isn't real and I can prove it, I know a parapsychologist, she'll prove it's all lies. It has to be." He was shaking all over, trying not to cry. "I'm not a monster, I'm a hero. I'm not evil, I know I'm not, I would never…" He shut his eyes tightly, breaking down as his knees gave out on him. "I dream it but I would never, ever, I couldn't ever hurt anyone, I don't want to, that's not who I am, I hate violence… I'm not a monster, I'm not, I'm not…"

_He's so angry he can't think. Andra is hurt, her scream piercing through him like a knife, and the people around her laugh. They laugh because no one will miss a homeless woman, no one cares if she dies. She's nothing to them. One of them rips her sweatshirt off and another throws her by the hair to the ground. Danny is a blur of motion, actions coming automatically out of some instinct he never knew he had, hands suddenly like claws and voice a growl. There is nothing then, no reason or thought, only motions that are as satisfying as they are foreign and a white hot, blinding fury that makes him faster and stronger than any child should ever be. He is impossibly tough and the fight is nothing more than a series of blows fast as lightning and a high of adrenaline that leaves him gasping and shaking on the floor when it is over, suddenly weak yet infinitely more at peace for it. They're safe for now._

_In the midst of the blood and violence Andra has picked up her knife and has used it in her own defense. Even so, her eyes are wide as she looks down at him. There is a silence as he stares at her, not comprehending her thoughts, not realizing until nearly a decade later that she'd been contemplating killing him, ridding the Earth of this eldritch abomination. Eventually love won out over fear and she knelt in the blood where he now sat terrified and crying, picking him up as the sound of Nokta scratches and claws at the door filled the room._

"_I won't let them get you," she promised softly, even though she felt farther from confident than she'd ever felt before._

Danny didn't even realize he had moved until a snowflake hit his cheek.

He was on a roof, far from his own house. Beside him, looking completely stoic and rather broken, stood Baxael. All his previous bravado and arrogance were gone. Instead he simply looked like an exhausted worker, infinitely more human and emotional than his earlier attitude would have suggested. Then again, what really qualified as human anymore? Certainly not Danny, not in his own mind, not now that he knew what he'd done. He laid on his back on the cold shingle roof and stared at the endless silver sky, feeling so many different things that something deep inside shattered. Then he felt nothing but absolute defeat. The emptiness was vast; he could fall inside himself right now and die and not care. There were so many questions he didn't want the answer to, so many things he didn't know or want to know, yet all he could do was think that everything was his fault. If he'd never been born Andra and Jocasta would still be alive. Those evil things wouldn't be here.

Evil. He was evil. He was a monster, a murderer, a bloodthirsty freak of nature. Funny, for someone who wasn't supposed to feel anything other than bloodlust, all he could do was try to keep his sobbing down to reasonable levels. His life felt like it was effectively over. He couldn't picture any kind of future for himself knowing what he knew now. He couldn't imagine trying to live among normal people knowing that he wasn't human. He wasn't a real person. The knowledge was like someone had punched a hole through his heart. He would never be real or whole ever again now that he knew he wasn't just having some bad dreams, he was actively, inherently, incredibly evil. The cold air and wind began to chill him and he didn't even notice as he sat up slowly, feeling a complete and utter hopelessness that seemed to envelop everything.

"We need to get back to work," Danny said quietly. "We're losing daylight. Tell me everything you know about the Nokta. We're killing them all tonight."

Baxael looked understandably startled. "And what then?" he asked.

Danny was silent.

But he was thinking a bullet through his head sounded pretty good right now.


	6. Reality

**Replies To Reviews:**

**Invader Johnny:** Danny's having a bit of an emotional crisis here. This is way too many revelations for anyone to handle in the span of one day. I know a lot of fanfic in other sections have the I Am What I Am And I Accept That Aesop, but in reality nobody processes things like that off the bat.

**D Back 47: **Well, I feel flattered as hell right now, but I also feel the need to tell you that there's a lot of good fic in this section. Google up TV Tropes; their Fanfic Recommendations page has some of the best fic on the internet and they've got pages for plenty of shows besides DP. It's well worth a look.

Also, to answer your question, the ghost portal was what gave him ghost powers. Danny was originally half and half, until the Ghost Portal gave him a new ghostly half. He's now a one of a kind, will never happen again three way hybrid. To answer the mortality issue: Nokta can be killed by injury to the brain via their eyes, their only true weak spot, as Jocasta discovered mid-combat. They're also capable of starving to death. This means Danny isn't totally immortal, he's just an extraordinarily hard to kill mortal. This actually brings up the issue of what happens when you kill a half ghost hybrid, but there are a lot of theories on that one, so I'm not going to tread over that territory again.

And yes, I know Danny's being a bit mature about the whole thing, but mostly it's just a mixture of shock and his built in hero complex. Try to suspend your disbelief, I really _am_ trying to keep him down to reasonable levels.

**Dragon Dancer 123:** Sorry. I know that the chapter before last did a pretty good job of playing it like Danny hadn't done anything bad, and in retrospect the last chapter probably feels like a punch to the gut, but I wanted it to be just as much of a surprise to the audience as it was to Danny.

**Queen Takhsis: **And yet again I feel flattered that this twist wasn't seen coming a mile away. Always nice to know that the reveal was actually a reveal and not something everyone already guessed.

**Dances With Death:** Aaand now I'm blushing. I love it when people tell me they didn't see the plot twist coming beforehand. It makes me feel like maybe I have a chance of being a published writer one day. Thanks!

**Valid User Name:** First off, your name is awesome. Secondly, thank you for the support and encouragement.

**Texas Dreamer 01:** Danny's hit the lowest he can feel right now. It'll get better for him, but that doesn't mean he's just going to bounce back from this reveal. It's hard as a writer to find a balance between angst and realistic emotional reactions.

**Also, due to college, this chapter was late, and I'm sorry, but life is just evil like that. French is a bitch, College Writing is all grammar and no plot, and I don't even have words to describe my other professors.

* * *

**

_We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars._ – Oscar Wilde

* * *

Baxael had never really known what to think about humans.

They were wicked, vile things who committed acts of evil far beyond that of most otherworldly creatures; they fought with each other on scales both huge and minor, always ready to tear each other apart. They were liars, betrayers, and madmen. But they were idealistic, loving, compassionate beyond all reason, open hearted in ways he could scarcely comprehend. That was why there were so many half human hybrids on Earth, after all. No other two species would ever be able to come together like that. Humans just couldn't help it. It wasn't in them to see wings or a murderous nature as a border between them and the other creatures of the Earth. They loved like children, heedless of the rules of society and nature. It was what made so different from all other people.

That was how Andra had gotten herself into trouble in the first place. That, however, was the past, and no matter what he thought of her, or of Jocasta, or the entire debacle, it wasn't supposed to affect how he handled the present situation. It _did _nonetheless. He couldn't strike the child down all those years ago and time had not sweetened the idea to him. He could throw out all the slurs he wanted and sneer how his nose at them, but some part of him loved humans. Or rather, he'd loved _a_ human, long ago, a man with snow white hair and boundless, neverending compassion for all his fellow creatures. Even the Nokta had been given a chance to leave for safer, more secluded grounds. That was who Jocasta was, a compromiser, a diplomat, an idealist coated in a thin layer of blood. He was no fool, no idiotic little child. He was a hero and he was Baxael's only friend. Before they'd met, Baxael had despised humans. Afterwards he was left with a lingering disdain for bad humans, given the life of privilege that they lived compared to other species. How Jocasta could simply befriend everyone, he didn't know.

Friendship… that was a very human concept, something he'd never really understood in its entirety. What he did understand was that Jocasta had given his life to keep this hybrid child alive despite Danny not being his own. Baxael hadn't understood and still partially refused to accept what the human had told him, that every sentient being had equals rights to existence. He would never be able to hold out the hand of peace to creatures that did such unspeakable acts, never be able to forgive the vile beasts entirely. There was a reason he was a spirit, not an angel. At the same time, he couldn't strike down the result of the unusual union. It would be spitting on Jocasta's memory and laughing in the face of all he'd ever worked for. A chance… he said to give Danny a chance, to let him have a shot at life instead of declaring him defective upon birth. That was a tough promise to make, a hard pill to swallow; everything within the ethereal being was repulsed by the darkness that would be in the child. But if Jocasta had told him to do something then Baxael would. It was blasphemy, but there was no authority in the universe higher than his best friend.

It was too late now for them to have ever amounted to anything more than that. And Baxael did not know how to love even if he wanted to. And he was a spirit, without a true gender, neither woman nor man, and he was ancient and… The reasons it was stupid were endless. This hadn't stopped him from promising to help the hybrid. There were half a dozen hybrids, actually, different mixes of human and supernatural, who Jocasta had sworn him to. The white haired man had known that his messing in the affairs of other species would get him killed. He'd accepted it calmly, too calmly for Baxael's taste, with a dissonant serenity that had been unnerving. _Humans and their moods,_ he thought idly. _Being a psychologist for them is a job that cannot possibly pay highly enough._ It was something about the good of many and the future of the world. Jocasta's dreamer talk had been hard to keep up with, if only because no one should live through what he had and still be an optimist to this degree.

Danny was still coming up with a plan, pacing on the rooftop and weighing his options. Something was very much not right with him; something had changed and Baxael didn't like it. Frowning, the otherworldly man snapped his fingers and teleported the dog from the Fenton household to Danny's side. Humans liked dogs, right? Some of them did, anyway. Besides, dogs could detect evil, so they'd need one as long as the Nokta were in the city. He explained this plan to Danny, who quirked an eyebrow at him. There was a silence as Danny mulled it over in his head. This was not the boy Baxael had seen in the kitchen, this was someone planning a final stand, and the effect was rather creepy. He was reminded of Jocasta in ways he'd really rather not be.

"A smaller dog would be better," he muttered at last.

"All we have is a big one," Baxael retorted dryly, "And I'm not chasing down a Pomeranian for the sake of convenience."

"I didn't know angels had a sense of humor."

"I'm quite a few ranks below that, Daniel. Someday, perhaps, but that's not a promotion you get overnight." He tried his best to look his usual sullen, arrogant self. It wasn't working. "Not that I'm ever getting that promotion. I meddle in human affairs too much. In any case, most animals will work for detecting evil… except cats. Cats can't sense it, which is why the Nokta tend to eat a lot of them when they get starving and desperate. On that note, where is the animal shelter in Amity? It's likely they'll be near there."

"Parapsychologist," Danny muttered, dazedly. "I have an appointment with… I guess I don't need her, now… There's nothing left to be explained to me. I know what I am."

Baxael paused. "Is her name Naran Pashki?"

Danny looked at him, startled. "How do you-"

"You're going to talk to her, Daniel. You need her guidance." Baxael's hands glowed faintly. "This can wait for an hour or two."

"But-"

And then everything swirled gold, and he was in a pile of snow. Brushing himself off, he turned to see an unfamiliar building in front of him. According to the address Sam had given him this was the home of the resident parapsychologist. Slowly, wondering why the dog was still behind him, he opened the door to be greeted with the warm, relaxing scent of incense. The smoke and scents were heavy, enticing, calming. When he closed the door, he could see a professional looking office and miniature waiting room, all in various shades of purple, gray and white. A woman with short, spiky black hair looked up at him, her eyes a green-gray that seemed somehow familiar. Her skin was the orange-brown of tea and her arms were covered in runes of some sort. Around her neck was a small bag of something that Danny couldn't identify but was instantly repulsed by. She was on her feet in a second.

"Sorry about the dynamic entry," Danny said sheepishly. "It, uh, was kind of out of my hands. I do have an appointment, though. Danny Fenton?"

Naran glanced at her schedule on the clipboard she held in her hands. "You're early, but I'm free. So let's get to it, shall we? Step into my office."

_Okay, she's taking this a little _too_ well,_ the raven haired teen thought to himself as he followed her into a room furnished entirely in gray save for the dark purple walls with intricate gold swirls painted onto them. Staring at them made Danny feel dizzy, and he was sure that he could see words there, so he directed his attention onto the parapsychologist. She was, according to the framed certificates on her wall, a member of multiple agencies and societies in the field of paranormal study. She also had a Masters Degree in Psychology. Somehow Danny wasn't reassured by this as much as he usually would have been, though admittedly things couldn't get any worse than they already had. Behind him, the dog rushed in and threw himself at the woman, wagging his fluffy tail.

"You found my dog!" Naran cheerfully exclaimed. "Thank goodness! I was getting worried about Snowy. He has a tendency to escape every time my back is turned. He likes to play guard dog to people sometimes."

In a fight between a Nokta and _Snowy_, Danny thought he had a pretty clear idea of who would win. "He's been guarding my kitchen all morning." He took a seat on one of the plush, cushy dark gray chairs. "I thought dogs could sense evil?"

"They can." Her eyes narrowed, but her expression was more exasperated than suspicious. "You're… not entirely human, are you? The way you're reacting to the runes, to the room, the rapid memory recovery… All the signs point to what we in the know like to call a triple H."

"A what?"

"Half human hybrid. Sometimes things are beyond anyone's control, and love overtakes reason. Humans are more prone to it than any other creature in history. Look through the myths and fairy tales of this Earth, and you'll find it's always us who love the monsters walking the Earth. We're the ones who will follow a fairy into their land for a chance at being with her. Humans are a very romantic species. Unfortunately, it doesn't always work out in the long run." Naran smiled benignly at him, though there was sadness in her eyes. "If you didn't know, you'd have objected, so I assume you've figured this out for yourself?"

"Some of it," he admitted quietly. "Most of it was explained to me by someone else. The condensed version is I'm half human, half," he paused over the word, as if admitting it would make him guilty of some cardinal sin, "Nokta."

Her eyebrows soared. "Now, _there's_ a combination I haven't seen in a long time. They're not the kind to take a liking to humans. Most of them live far away from humankind; they prefer caves, forests, dense tropics, anywhere that's dark and moist."

_Danny was huddled in the closet, curled into a little ball, wishing his mommy were here. These new people were nice but they weren't her, they didn't know any of her songs or stories and he wanted to go home! The small boy sniffed and buried his head in his knees, grateful for the darkness. His eyes hurt in the light…_

"My mother lived in Pharos City. I think my father did too, but I don't know. I know that we moved around a lot. We lived with at least three people I can think of, two apartments and a hotel." Danny rubbed at his forehead. "What I want to know is… what does this mean for me? For my future? Am I… evil? I don't want to be a monster. I don't want to hurt anyone."

"Nokta are not destined to be evil. Nothing is." Naran met his eyes and held her gaze steadily. "Just because they were told to be evil, hardwired to be it, doesn't mean that they are. Everything evolves, changes, _chooses_. Most of them have left humanity for the remote wilderness so that they can live in peace. The ones who are people-eaters still _know_ that they don't have to do this. They're making a choice, the same as any human criminal. Even with human beings, there are sociopaths who willingly decide not to give in to their base instincts."

"My instincts are awful, R-rated things that make me sick," he shot back angrily. "How can you just dismiss this with a 'it's up to you, it'll be fine' feel good speech?"

She scowled at him. "All over the world, half human hybrids are being abused. They are drowned, set on fire, shot at point blank by their own families. The more human looking ones may be able to get a job that keeps them from starving to death. The more exotic looking ones are regularly sold, in some regions, into sexual slavery. You are American, you are middle class, you look human, and you have parents who loved you enough not to leave you in a ditch somewhere in Siberia. Do I expect you to bounce back over night? No. But I expect you to take a moment from the depths of your angst to realize how incredibly, insanely lucky you are. You are lucky to be alive, you are lucky to look human, you're lucky to have acted normal so far. Now, after all these things beings handed to you, I am asking you to do one thing: fight your own instincts and win. Isn't that the least you owe your parents?"

Mentally, Danny decided he hated all psychologists of all kinds. They made too much sense and saw right through him. It wasn't a pleasant experience. Still, he nodded at her question. Andra's screams still haunted him, the way she broke down into tears was still crystal clear in his mind. Everything still felt bottomless, hopeless, but he could try. For her, for how much she loved him, for Jocasta's attempts to give him a chance at escaping, he could try to keep living. What the future was, he didn't know. Everything seemed so uncertain. All he knew was that he had more knowledge of the Nokta than anyone else in town, save for a parapsychologist the police wouldn't listen to. Maybe before all this, he wouldn't have believed her himself. Yet now that he knew, he knew what he had to do. He would stop history from repeating itself this time around.

After that… he didn't know. He couldn't picture his life now. The floor had been ripped out from under him. Nothing made an ounce of sense anymore; the world was a horrifying and violent place. He'd always known bad things happened, in the same abstract way he knew that his food was grown far away and his clothes were made in foreign countries. None of it seemed real until it was in front of his eyes. His life had changed. Everything had changed. With a real present danger he cherished and loved his family and friends more fiercely than he had before. Nothing would hurt them so long as he lived, and even if tomorrow was a mystery, they were worth protecting. He wasn't going to just wake up then be over all of this. He wasn't going to snap his fingers and go back to being who he used to be. But he wasn't going to sit around moping while Rome burned.

_A history reference,_ he thought._ Mr. Lancer would die of shock._

"Mrs. Pashki," Danny said slowly, "How much can I trust you? Will you keep this all a secret?"

"You have my word as your therapist."

He could see the honesty in her eyes. "Then there's something you should know. I have to tell you, so I can know what this means for me biologically, and you're the only person I can think of that would understand. Just don't freak out on me, okay?"

Naran nodded solemnly.

Later on, he would reflect long and hard over this moment, wondering what prompted it. Desperation, anxiety, hopelessness, a need to be understood on some level – whatever it was that caused him to reveal his secret identity to her, he didn't know. His parents didn't know who he really was. Tomor didn't know what his civilian identity was. His friends didn't know his terrible heritage. Yet he knew, implicitly, that he could trust this woman, and the deed was done in mere seconds. Something akin to relief flooded through him. He wanted to know all about his biology, physiology, psychology, to be told he wasn't evil, he was just unique or something else that wasn't so terrifying. He wanted her to take him aside and tell him all the facts, what to eat, where to avoid, how to get through life. Some part of him desperately wanted her to take him by the hand and tell him that it would all be okay and she knew what to do.

Instead, she took one look at him and nearly passed out, stumbling back into her own chair, hand over her mouth and eyes wide.

It was about then that Danny began to realize she was in over her head, too.

Define, if you will, a bad day.

For some people this would mean being stuck in traffic, or being forced to work and skip lunch, or ruining their outfit. For Tomor, this meant being attacked by what appeared to be a red haired androgynous teenager with a very bad attitude. Unfortunately for him Tomor was not one of those police chiefs you'd see on TV with a beer belly and fifty extra pounds. He was tackled behind and rolled with it, throwing the attacker off balance and off his back. As quick as his reflexes would allow him, he slammed his fist into the assailant's neck. At this moment, he realized that he was not fighting a normal human being. Most people didn't just blink at having their windpipe crushed. All this boy did was narrow his eyes considerably before beginning to strike back.

There was a blow to his side that he managed to block followed by an inhumanly fast drop to the ground followed by a leg sweep. The next thing Tomor knew he was on his back and his side was being stomped on. He rolled away and pulled in gun with honed speed, aiming at the body mass and firing. All he got in response was a sharp intake of breath and a kick to the hands. His weapon went scurrying as the man with the blood red hair crouched down and clenched his hands around the Mongolian man's neck. A flurry of kicks to the assailant's groin did nothing. The man didn't even flinch. His pitch black eyes were completely devoid of emotion.

"This is going to suck," Tomor muttered, and then he did a very stupid thing.

Tazers are designed to be used on someone the user isn't touching. Electricity does not distinguish between friend and foe. Only a complete idiot or someone with a wickedly high pain tolerance would ever use it on someone strangling them, but in Tomor's defense, he'd dropped his gun and couldn't pull his knife from his angle. In addition to that, he was also a stubborn person and he'd be damned if he was going to ask for help or scream like a little girl. He didn't survive twenty years as a cop just to be taken down by some uppity pretty boy with an emo haircut. He cranked it up as high as it could go, thanked God he was wearing leather gloves, and pressed the button. There was a scream, and pain like fire in his veins, and then he was free. With speed belying a man who'd just been electrocuted himself, he was on his feet and feeling the full rush of adrenaline in his body.

His boot made a lovely cracking sound as it hit the boy's head. Yet his opponent was up again with inhuman speed, grinning in the most sadistic way imaginable as he held up his hand. Everything grew suddenly dark around him, and Tomor didn't even feel his body hitting the ground.

"Tuslaarai…" he muttered softly, breaking his own promise to himself about asking for help, but no one was there to head him anyway.

_Oyuun wasn't sleeping._

_He was standing in the doorway, unseen and silent like a ghost, watching his father cry and wondering what to do. The sobs were shaking Iderbayar's body, his shoulders weak and slumped. After a period of time, he stopped, his eyes gazing unseeing into the fire. His youngest son opened the door, quietly moving to his father's side. There were discarded bottles of alcohol on the floor. Somehow it didn't seem repulsive when it was his father. It just seemed sad, hopeless. He'd been trying so hard to help his little sisters out ever since their mother died, but it didn't seem to be helping. Oyuun could not replace their mother. He could not replace his older siblings, who had left for the simple life on the plains that Iderbayar despised so much. They had all left him and hadn't even returned for the funeral, leaving him alone in the rain to bury the love of his life._

_Oyuun Tomor wanted to see his father smile again, just once. He had cleaned the apartment from head to toe and made dinner for him and all he got was a handful of one word responses. In the firelight he could see the rings under the older man's eyes. At twelve years old, Oyuun wasn't old enough to understand everything his father was going through. What he did understand was pain, hurt, and loss. It wasn't as if being abandoned by his older siblings was easy. It wasn't like he didn't hear the arguments they had with his father, telling him he was a sellout, an American wannabe who'd turned his back on his culture. The words cut him deeply, too. He tried to be strong for Erdene and Enkhtuyaa, but deep down there was a constant whirlwind of emotions. He wanted to punch something, scream and cry all at once. The only reason he didn't was that he was afraid if he did, he'd never stop._

_His father looked up when he felt his son's hand on his shoulder. "Oyuun, what are you still doing up?"_

"_I was worried. Are you alright?" It was a stupid question. He just didn't know what else to say. For a moment, his father just looked at him blankly, like he hadn't even heard. From by the fireplace, the radio began playing Sarantuyaa's Amragiin Tavilan._

"_How the hell do you think I'm doing?" His father was on his feet now, his face obscured by shadows, and Oyuun took a step back before reminding himself that one day he'd be a police officer and the police didn't feel fear, they were courageous and bold like super heroes._

_That was what he told himself when the first strike to the face landed and he fell to the floor. He was a hero and heroes were strong. They didn't cry._

_And neither did he._

Danny saw more than heard what was happening.

He was vaguely aware of priorities and getting back to Baxael, but he didn't care very much. For reasons he never quite identified, he'd come to think of the new police chief as something of a father figure. He was funny, calm, dedicated, and honest, all the things Danny wished he could be. He was a good person in a world increasingly filled with dishonesty. He was willing to break police regulation to save lives. And he was being beaten to a pulp by something that set off Danny's ghost sense, albeit in a minor, barely visible wisp. Anger coursed through him. _Not in my city, you jackass!_

Now, there are a number of tactics that could have been employed here. Typically, Danny liked to fight fair, with warning and clear shots for everywhere. Typically this got him his own ass kicked rather thoroughly, and he ended up just barely winning his fights. Today was not a good day to cross the super hero. He was in no mood for games, fair fights, rules or witty one liners. Funny joke around Danny was not here today. He aimed carefully and hit the red haired menace from behind with two green beams. He'd expected maybe a scream or a swearword. What he hadn't expected was to melt the man's skin at the neck where part of the green ectobeam touched. Screeching at an inhumanly high pitch, the man whirled around and snarled, baring frighteningly sharp fangs. Still, angry or not, the man knew when to pick his fights. He was over the fence and into the bushes before Danny could catch his name.

The ghost boy knelt beside Tomor, who was still twisting and turning, face contorting in pain. "Bi oilgokhgui baina, bi oilgokhgui baina! Uuchlaarai! Bi chamd khairtai! Uuchlaarai!"

"Tomor? Tomor!" Danny shook the man's shoulders desperately. "Snap out of it, it's okay! I'm right here! Wake up-"

That was when the redheaded man made a swift return. Danny wasn't the only one who didn't believe in playing fair. The impact threw him off his feet, but his intangibility threw the man off balance. An ectoblast to the face might've been lethal. Thankfully for his attacker, Danny wasn't ready to cross that line yet, and he aimed squarely at the man's chest, throwing him into a nearby wall. The blood haired man still screeched in pain nonetheless, falling to his hands and knees and breathing very shakily. Sirens echoed in the distance, signaling the inevitable approach of the police. Around them, the quiet neighborhood where the original crime took place looked innocent and normal enough. What could not be seen was the changes in the people since the murders. They would never be slow to report anything again. Escaping scot free in Amity Park was about to become a hell of a lot harder.

"What did you do to him?" Danny demanded. "I promise not to kill you. All I want is answers."

"Here's your answer," the man muttered, and he held up his hand. The black light swirled and spun around Danny, but he just scowled through it. The redhead was already pale as death, yet he managed to go a shade lighter nonetheless. "No, no. You'd have to be part Nok-"

And that was when Danny grabbed him by the collar and punched him, knocking him out cold.

"I'll get those answers later," he explained as the sirens drew increasingly closer. "Right now, I'll settle for keeping the people trying to murder me down to the single digits."

_Huh. I guess I had a witty one liner in me after all._


	7. Location

**Dragon Dancer 123:** I've never understood why less than perfect childhood always equals a borderline Mary Sue. How exactly is it that having an abusive father automatically qualifies a person for the title 'too perfect to be real'? I've never gotten this and I don't think I ever will.

**Hreft 93:** I don't know if he's really half ghost; couldn't he theoretically just be part ghost? Just because the accident made Vlad half ghost doesn't mean the ectoplasm would react the same way for another person. Besides that, just ignore the questionable math involved. Only a DNA test could clear this up and there's no way that's happening at this point.

**Invader Johnny:** I don't know, I think 'I'll protect everyone because I love them' is fairly heroic. He may be fighting a little dirtier than in canon, but I've always had a more pragmatic view on combat, so it could just be that I believe it's what a person's fighting for that makes a difference. In any case, God knows I'm trying to keep him in character. It's just that you can't expect him to go through revelations like this without being changed.

**Dances With Death:** When this is over, there will probably be a sequel. But if I say anything more that, I'd be spoiling it.

**Our Lady Bonbons:** Much like with Dances With Death, I want you to know that I would love it if there were a band with your name. That said, thank you so much for the compliments and taking the time to read everything! I'm really glad you liked The Reveal and the resulting fallout, and I'm absolutely thrilled that you love Rashmi. She's not really in focus just yet, but I was sure her age alone might turn off readers. (In my defense, Dash is immature. They're the same age mentally!)

**What Happened 2 Nice:** Well, now I'm blushing. These are the kind of compliments that leave me unable to say anything else in response. Though I'm mostly rendered speechless, I'd like to tell you how much this means to me. I think I just felt my self esteem grow.

**D Back 47:** Well, he'll have some advantages to being Nokta, but it's not without its disadvantages. His weak, geeky physique is due to a lack of proper diet for his species and he's never going to deal well with large doses of direct sunlight, but I'd be lying if I said he wasn't going to get something out of it in return. A new power is coming, but as we say over on TV Tropes, it's Power At A Price. Lord forbid I let Danny become all power and turn this into a blatant Danny Stu. Hopefully I'll be able to fulfill your expectations without it becoming cheesy as hell.

**Texas Dreamer:** It wouldn't be a Danny Phantom fanfic without one liners. Even dark fics need them.

**Emma – Call Me Jane:** At this rate I swear to God my face is going to go permanently red from these compliments. Seriously, the Danny Phantom section is really nice. If I put this much effort into a fanfic in other sections I don't think I'd be noticed over the popular pairing poorly written dredge. I'm really flattered by the idea that you think this is on par with published works, and I mean that sincerely. It's not often that I get that kind of compliments, especially at college, where writing teachers want me to write down to earth stories without paranormal elements. Merci beaucoup. J'adore la lecture, ecriture, etc. J'aimerais etra ecrivain. Une seule langue n'est jamais suffisante.

**A free ten thousand word mini fic to whoever successfully guesses who He is by the end of the chapter; just PM me with the name of the series he's from and, as a reward for guessing the crossover, you will get Danny Phantom fic of any pairing of your choosing… **although come to think of it, this is such an American thing that I can't help but apologize to my international readers, as the He referenced is a completely unheard of concept over there. Sorry! I'll make my next reference easier to get for those outside my own nation. Sorry for the small reference pools! It wasn't something that crossed my mind when I was planning this fic.

* * *

_What if I told you it doesn't help? What would you do if you found out that none of it matters? That it's all controlled by forces more powerful and uncaring than we can conceive and they will _never_ let it get better down here? What would you do?_ — Gunn, from the show Angel

* * *

If this were a TV show, Naran Pashki was sure the running narration in her voice would say something to the effect of 'this was no routine case'.

The reality of it was that paranormal investigators and psychologists don't have routine cases. They don't have normal everyday experiences; everything is unique and intricate, complicated and highly individualized. Nothing in either profession tends to repeat itself. So while a call to come to the police station and identify a non human humanoid with the ability to create nightmares was odd, it wasn't completely out of the blue. When everything was a surprise, everything began to lose staying power and the ability to stun her. In the falling snow, she made her way to the police station. After that she would go to the hospital to help the victim of this creature to the best of her abilities. Past that there was no plan. When your job description was two jobs in one, schedules were wishful thinking at best. The only certainty was that things would always, _always_ come up and keep her out later than she wanted.

Being a paranormal investigator was not a job she would ever imagine quitting, yet she rarely got an ounce of respect for it. Snobby white people dedicated to science were more than happy to look down their noses at 'primitive' people and declare monsters an impossibility. The ruling class in any society always had the best security, so the poor people who were the most vulnerable simply didn't matter. Only when some of their own went down did people ever pause to consider the world beyond their living rooms, the problems that existed besides their own flat tires and bad commute. Naran was not an optimist. The profession she was in left very little room for that kind of thing. When an average day involved sorting out schizophrenics from the possessed, being logical and calm took everything she had. Though she could put on a happy face and fool the children, underneath she was just increasingly empty and worn down. Amity had supposed to be a reprieve, just ghosts and nothing more. This was supposed to be an easy place to live and work.

But no one ever listened to her until the water was up to their waists and the sharks were circling.

Sometimes, privately, she wanted to be the bearer of good news. Just once, she wanted to be treated like an expert and not a crazy person. Only in Amity did she ever get anything close to respect. Here, where the dead walked among them quite regularly, what was scientific and what was real became too blurred to be separated. She pushed open the door to the police station. All around her were officers calling her 'ma'am' who wouldn't have given her the time of day had it been yesterday. Although under Tomor's leadership they'd trimmed the corrupt officers and the outright evil men, they were still loathe to accept anyone's help. It was a trait she'd picked up any time Tomor himself was on the news. It wasn't so much that he didn't want it, as it was that he seemed to think help was never coming at all. His disbelieving scowl turned his features ugly and his expression distant. His defensive nature told her very clearly from her few brief meetings with him that he didn't expect anything from anyone.

She wondered, as she went down the steps to the basement cells, who had broken his spirit like that.

* * *

Tomor blinked slowly in the bright lights.

Fluorescent lights, crappy blankets, and the smell of plastic – a hospital. He sat up slowly and looked around the room. Danny Phantom was hovering over him and Vlad Masters was nearby talking to a doctor, something about needing the police chief involved. _Love you too, Impaler,_ the Mongolian man snarked mentally, and then he comprehended what was going on and tried to go into full police officer mode. The dull ache in his entire body hindered even the smallest movement. He swayed with every attempt to stand or walk. Still, he could _do_ it, so he was going to ignore the throbbing in his head until after the serial killers were neutralized. He wrinkled his nose. Incense and roses. Naran was here?

_Oh, great. I was just thinking that I needed another arrogant expert here to ruin my life,_ he snapped mentally. _Don't let the doctors have all the fun, Pashki._

"Where the hell are my gun and my badge, doc?" he asked bluntly, ignoring the concerned nurse telling him he needed to rest. "I need to get back to the station."

"Who's in charge when you're not there?" Danny asked curiously.

"Officer Morgan, this time, at least." Tomor shoved his hands in his pockets, grateful the hospital staff hadn't undressed him or put him in one of those ridiculous gowns. "He's seen some messed up stuff, so I figure he's best equipped to handle this kind of situation. How long have I been out and what's happened?"

"Mr. Tomor," the doctor began immediately, "I really don't think you should be active given-"

"Do I have life threatening injuries?" he interrupted, looking as he always did – perpetually scowling. "If not, I'm going down there. Mayor Impaler, I assume you have a car?" He barely waited for a confirmation before continuing, "Then take me, Glowy," he gestured to Danny with his head, "And the parapsychowhateverist to the station. I need a debriefing and we need a plan of action. All the murders have happened at night and my little nap cost us precious time."

Maybe if he talked fast enough the images wouldn't haunt him later tonight. If not, there was always vodka. No one did alcohol better than America. Right now, though, he ran his hands through his unruly hair to flatten it and strode, Vlad and Danny trailing, down the halls of the hospital glaring to death anyone who objected. Paperwork could wait. This was war, on his city, and he wasn't about to fail this time. As the last rays of sunlight vanished in Amity City, its protectors gathered in a limo, and prepared to end the nightmare.

But across the city, it was just beginning.

* * *

Rashmi slowly opened her eyes and, for a moment, didn't know where she was.

The TV's sounds took a moment to register for her. When it did, she remembered. Glancing off to the side, she smiled serenely. Dash would hate it, but he was really cute when he was out like a light. His ribs were still bandaged thickly, the flickering lights of the set making them glow in the darkness of the room. Glancing at the clock with a start, she realized she was far past curfew. To make matters worse, it had snowed a whole foot. Maybe she'd get to try and use something for a sled after all; she didn't have her backpack on her, but Rashmi would think of something to use. It was a good opportunity. Yawning and stretching, the lithe Indian girl got to her feet slowly so as not to disturb Dash on the couch. There was a throw blanket on the couch that she draped over him carefully, and then she was gone, quiet as a ghost.

The night was completely silent around her, like a void. Snow swallowed up sound, ice bit at her from all directions, and she was alone. Flakes twinkled like miniature stars in the streetlights as Rashmi made her way down the lonely streets. Everything seemed to sparkle and glow now, in ways she'd never seen back home. It was absolutely stunning. How Dash could complain about this kind of thing she'd never know. Movement was slow, but everything was so beautiful she didn't really mind. Up above somewhere in the sky an owl hooted. That was all the warning she had.

Try, if you can get away with it, attacking a small target sometime. The shorter the frame, the more off balance you have to be to make any kind of attack. This was the sole reason Rashmi survived. When the Nokta rushed at her, all teeth and eyes glinting in the streetlights, it threw itself off balance so much that she could push it off. Sliding on the snow, it scrambled for several long seconds while she backed up and tried to think of what to do. If this were a horror movie the street savvy girl might have taken this opportunity to kick ass. Instead, she did what to her was a logical thing. The houses on the hill were built into flat, raised rock beds. These formed small ledges she could use to pull herself up, and she was just short enough and pint sized enough to shove herself through the iron gate, spiky fence. There was a crash just behind her, a claw that ripped at her leg, but through the pain she pressed forward into the bushes, through the brambles that scratched at her face and the leaves that smelled like smoke. Behind her she heard terrible snarling and screeching. A hand was around her ankle, and she swore her heart skipped a beat.

The grip tightened. She pulled away as hard as she could, and her ankle cracked threateningly, but a moment later her boot was gone and she was scrambling away, onto the property in question. The lights were on and there was a face in the window. Still, despite her banging on the walls and clawing at the windows, no one answered, and then she heard the thing trashing its way through the bushes. Only then did she understand the phrase 'too afraid to scream'. Bolting, adrenaline not making the numbing cold any easier on her bootless foot, she looked around for something, anything. For a moment it was like everything was completely alien to her. Then she began to think, fractured, terrified thoughts. Speed. Escape. Her eyes locked on the sled in the corner of the yard. She grabbed it, vaulted over the fence, and landed with a hard thud, the pain coursing up her shoulder like a jolt of lightning.

No time to plan or think or cry or hurt. She just _was_, in that very primal human way. The only downhill road took her to what was unfamiliar territory for her, but it took her there at a fairly good speed, and she was barely even controlling the damn thing, just holding the reigns. It hit a drift and sent her flying. Fumbling in the dark, lost and cold, she scrambled for the nearest spot, a space inbetween boarded up windows. She was through it with a lot of pushing and twisting, afraid she might get stuck and die like this, aching and bruised when the wood finally yielded the half an inch it took to let her get through. Flopping on the dark floor of wherever she had landed, Rashmi was so consumed with trying to breathe properly that she screamed when something snarled.

It was on the other side of the window, watching, but it didn't enter. This was no comfort to her, as just then a horrible sound echoed all around her, a screech that seemed to make everything blur for a moment, and her blood ran cold. The monster in front of her ran, and she was left with nothing save for the sound of her own breathing and the faintest light coming from the cracks in the boarding.

Somehow, nothing scared her more than the total quiet all around her.

It was only later she'd realize that she had been screaming, and the sound hadn't even reached her own ears.

* * *

The person they'd captured was, oddly enough, just that; a human.

He was completely deranged beyond the point of comprehension, and chattering on and on about thing no one else understood, but he was a human now. Danny could've sworn he'd gotten a different vibe from him before. Naran said that there was something wrong with him, a severely tainted aura, as if he'd been forcibly altered to the point where his origins were unclear. For the moment he was mortal and human and subject to the physical limitations of their species. His eyes had changed to normal brown ones. Giddy, impatient and rambling, he bounced in his seat when Tomor entered and began shrieking with laughter when Naran did. The Mongolian and the Indian shared looks of exasperation before sitting down. Through the tinted glass, Danny stood still, waiting and watching the bizarre week from hell unfold before him.

"Oh, this is so _perfect_," the redheaded suspect giggled, tilting his head towards Naran. "I can't believe you just walked into this. Some expert you are! Here we were all worried that you might know what we were up to, that you might actually be forming a counterattack plan or something, and you're clueless!" He laughed, a hysterical sound that sent shivers down Danny's spine. "I shouldn't have been worried since they've never been wrong before. They're agents of him, so why would they be? He's more powerful than any of the creatures in this dimension could ever be!"

"This interrogation might be the easiest I ever do," Tomor noted dryly. "I'll just let him talk for an hour and decode it all later. Should've brought coffee or a sandwich or something for this."

"You're so screwed," continued the once supernaturally powered human. "You're all so dead when _he_ gets here! It won't be long now! You're running out of time and you're not even on the right track, you think this is about vampires and Nokta and fairies and ghosts, but you can't see the big picture. You don't even have a clue what the real problem is. See, that's why _he_ is coming here in the first place. This dimension has lots of ghosts, but the rest of your monsters are all pretty much extinct or on the run or way out there in the middle of nowhere. Your experts all think they've got it figured out here. That's why it's a perfect place! When _he_ gets here you won't know what to do. This city's got so many other problems that no one will know it's him, they'll think it's ghosts and then dismiss it!" He bounced in his chair. "He might not even strike here if the Nokta finish you off first. You're so weak! He might just keep moving 'cause once you're out you're free free free to walk the Earth!"

Tomor groaned and rolled his eyes. "I used to wonder why anyone would quit an easy beat like Amity. Thanks for clearing that one up. Pashki, can you make sense of any of this? I'm not too well versed on this whole paranormal deal."

"I see you Danny!" the redheaded teenager yelled out, cheerfully. "He wants you to know that you'll be okay! He doesn't need you at all, no no no, he wants the girl with the green eyes, she's so fun to play with, so much fun when she bleeds – humans are so much more fun to play with anyway, but you know that, don't you, Danny?"

Green eyes. The girl with green eyes. His mind raced, because he knew so many women with eyes like that in his school, and something's very wrong here. Under normal circumstances Danny might just dismiss the man as a loon. Right now, he couldn't; he didn't know why, but he was sure that there was a serious threat here, somewhere in all that gibberish. Somewhere in all this chatter there were pieces of something much greater and darker. Memories of murder and blood flashed through his mind, screams and anger so intense it burned until it froze. Nobody knew Danny had feelings like that, no one knew Danny Fenton did and nobody should ever be able to suspect that in Danny Phantom. So why was someone who was supposed to be crazy just casually spewing out all his deepest secrets like this? He took a breath he didn't need in his ghost form and felt his sixth sense tingle. This was not a joke, not a lunatic, not a crazy person to be ignored.

"He's not using her now though, nope! See, you're all so stupid – I'm sorry, I'm sorry," he cackled madly, tears brewing in his eyes. "It's just so hard to take you idiots seriously. You talk about eldritch abominations and the Afterworld like you're all so smart and you… you really don't know anything. That's why I get to talk. See I, I'm the distraction, but even if I wasn't here, it'd still be good as done. Either you find the place with the Operator symbol and you stop the breakthrough or you can stop the Nokta, but you can't do both at once. You can't so, so, s_o_, you're fucked!" He threw his head back so hard it looked painful and shrieked again, in delight. "Who do you like more Danny, Valerie or Rashmi? They've got her and he's got her, they're about to go buh bye, and it's all up to you! And no matter what, you're losing losing losing! It's either stop the town from destruction or the dimension but you're gonna die and then no one will stop him after that no one his time is coming HE'S ALMOST HERE!" He screamed, then pitched forward, lifeless.

There was a smile on him, even in death.

Danny heard Tomor shout something, felt a police officer's hand on his shoulder, but he didn't hear, didn't even think, just moved. Fly, phase, zoom, search, panic, and energy, hate like ice and fire; everything seemed out of his hands. Whatever he thought about Sam and Valerie and all the complications there between them, he couldn't let her die. He couldn't… was she the girl with the green eyes mentioned before? Was she being attacked as he looked for her? Where was Rashmi? Where could she possibly be? What was happening? He felt an acute twisting sensation in his stomach as he realized he was completely lost. Below the hybrid the world was bathed in white, pristine and undisturbed, picturesque, his perfect little home town. Somehow the pause between things going wrong was the most unbearable for him.

Then two screams pierced the night, from opposite directions, and he had to ask himself a question he knew would haunt him forever: whose life was most important?

* * *

Rashmi was in the middle of an underground building.

She yanked open a door and fell through to the attic of another.

Never before had she been this scared; her heartbeat was audible in her own head, she could feel distinctly every nerve, and she scarcely dared to look anywhere or move an inch. _Too afraid to run, too afraid to stay, just like that movie with the witch_, she thought half-hysterically as she stumbled through the darkened space. When she yanked open the attic door she jumped back, expecting the world to shift out from under her again. Instead, as she could tell from using her cell phone for a flashlight, the proportions seemed right this time. She stepped through and froze when she heard something behind her. There was nothing in the dark but herself, no shadows on the wall that shouldn't be there, nothing that wasn't right except that she was inexplicably here. The hallway led to an old oak staircase that was long enough to have a landing. Down below there was something, some kind of audible distortion, a noise she couldn't put into words.

It was static, screeching, whispers, crackling, everything all at once, a shift in what sound around her was. Colors blurred until they became too bright and sharp to be real. The noise almost made sense. Somewhere down the hallway, out of her weak light's range, she thought she saw a figure in the distance. There was a terrifying pause as she weighed her options and glanced out at the window. She felt like being sick. She felt like screaming. She wanted to collapse and run, die and live, and she wondered if she'd survive the fall to the ground from this height, or if she could break the glass at all with how weak she was. Rashmi's breath was coming out in puffs in front of her. All she could see distorted further, blurring and then sharpening, graying and sparkling, and she screamed with more intensity than she ever had in her life.

She bolted for the window.

Someone jumped out at her, mask looking like an alien face in the night's frail light, and she was being choked on the floor. Then, with inhuman strength, someone was lifting her upwards, pulling her up the stairs to where something horrible stood at the top of the landing. She saw it through a haze of pain and impossible lighting; far, far too tall, slender, think like sticks, inhuman, and flickering in and out of existence. It reached out its horrible hands for her as the volume on the noise increased until she couldn't think and the world blacked out, the only color or distinction its completely white skin. There was a head with no face, too many arms to count, and she was trashing for everything she was worth, but then it touched her and it all went painfully white.

Seconds later, it all went painfully black, and all she could hear was a low chuckling.


	8. Blessure Grave

**Replies to Reviews!**

**Midnayuki: **Thank you for the thoughtful compliments and I will do my best to keep Danny in-character for the duration of this, I promise. I'm amused by how many people like 'Mayor Impaler' as a nickname for Vlad. Tomor may have a bit of a drinking problem, and he's no good at facing his own issues, but hopefully his snark and wit keep him from being unlikable.

**Invader Zhyr:** I'm glad that my attempts at murder scenes worked for you. They're not something I'm used to writing, and sometimes I worry as to the quality of my writing. But, I was taught by my first writing teacher that a good writer will listen to their feedback and learn from it instead of trying to make it all perfect to your own eyes. So if people say I'm not messing something up, it's a good reassurance that I've done something right. Thank you for the review!

**Invader Johnny:** -looks down at this chapter- Pretty much, yeah.

**Dragon Dancer:** It's a huge part of his character. A normal childhood would not have produced the no-nonsense determinator that Tomor is; he's as he is because he's got a complex about looking weak after what happened to him. Not everyone in real life had a 'normal' childhood with a nuclear family and a loving upbringing. The association of abuse with Mary Sues is just another way to stigmatize anyone who's gone through abuse as being unacceptable.

**QueenTahksis: **Your Tokka fic is up and going, you know. Chapter two is in the works, but Toph is a kid detective. It's worth reading just for that.

**Jean Curtis:** At least in my mind, Danny's inability to take things seriously in the series was a result of his mixed blood; ghosts aren't that attached to the human world or as frightened by physical violence, which enabled Danny to be a hero but occasionally made him unaware of people's feelings. Then again, this is all just my own speculating.

**I am so sorry for the delay in updating! **College is hellish but the story is nearly done. My classes for next semester don't look too bad and luckily this means more time to do things I actually like. I hope to be better about this in the future. I'm really sincerely sorry about these lapses in schedule and hope you'll all forgive me. My computer in my dorm broke and so I've been using my old one at home over the weekends, but right now I'm risking a permaban from the school library to write this for you. Hope that makes up for the schedule slip!

* * *

_Character is what you are in the dark. - _American proverb.

* * *

The snow was falling in fat flakes, blanketing the ground in pristine white.

Danny couldn't breathe.

_Choose!_ He could see that he was damned, that either decision would haunt him for a very long time. He could see the pros and cons. But in the end, there was only one logical choice, one choice that was needed. He was going to turn his back on his entire town for the sake of the world and even if everyone else was okay with it, he wasn't going to be. Even as he flew in the direction of the distortion in the sky, those flashes and glitchy patches that marked the sight of something beyond the Nokta, he could feel regret rising up in him. Abruptly that gave way to sheer anger. He was so tired of always being the one in this position. He was tired of having to fight fights that weren't his and his reward for trying to do the right thing was for things to keep going wrong. He'd fought against his own nature to help people. Now it was all going to Hell for the third time in as many days. If someone didn't explain things to him soon - no, he mentally backspaced, he didn't need an explanation anymore. He just needed it to all be over. He needed a break. He needed to sleep. Anger rolled through him in waves. Civilians didn't deserve this kind of treatment. Tonight he was going to kill this thing or die trying.

And what of the Nokta? What of the supernatural creatures running free through this city, his distant relatives? What was he going to do about them? What were they going to do while he was consumed with this fight? Who was going to end up dying because of his actions? What the hell was he thinking? His mind raced and his heart pounded at almost human levels, quite fast for a ghost... thing. Whatever he was. He felt a familiar and long suppressed urge to hurt something, kill something, make someone bleed. He wanted to do something violent. He wanted to _be_ something _evil_. To hell with the consequences and the moral implications. He was tired of trying so hard to act like nothing was wrong.

The next person to cross him wasn't going to live to regret it.

* * *

Rashmi was still alive.

She was hurting in ways she didn't know she could hurt; pain was rolling through her in waves, erractic, blow after blow of raw agony. Her body convulsed, her legs kicked, she drew blood clutching her head, screamed until her throat went raw and sound didn't come out. Tears streaked her face. Cold sweat coated her as she struggled against an attacker she couldn't see - because she couldn't see anything. What she managed to glimpse in the blackness didn't make sense. A head without a face, a red tower, a dark tunnel, an old factory. Sounds of crickets, screams, screeches, beeps and tones inhuman and thought-destroying. Sensory overload, she was overloaded and nothing made any sense anymore. If she could have thought she'd have thought it was terrible. If she could have prayed she'd have begged for death. Her body locked up from sheer pain, her breath stopping as she arched against the cold wooden floor. She wasn't sure how long she'd been where, or where here was. All that existed was this moment, this pain, her nerves on fire, her world falling away to be replaced by darkness unending and pain. The pain was constant, if indescribable. And she was going to break. Was she already broken? She didn't know. She just _was, _like an animal or a baby, simplistic in her suffering.

"Lay the _fuck_ off my girlfriend!"

Dash.

_Dash_.

Warm eyes, a blue like the sapphire ring in her mother's wedding ring. Hair gold like wheat in the sunset. Dash. A hand on hers, a heavy heart, a loner in a crowd. So tired. He was so tired. And she was a soft place to fall. She had never wanted anything of him other than a friend, and nobody ever wanted to be his friend before without an ulterior motive. They weren't like the other couples. They weren't popular or liked or accepted by anyone but each other. Each other was enough. That was all they needed. All _she_ needed. Dash was every good memory and every brave smile. She knew him even when her pain was so intense she didn't know herself.

"Dash-!" she choked out. "Get -away-!"

A wound errupted in her side as if in retaliation. Her fists slammed against the floor, hard enough to bruise as her mouth opened and a raw, animalistic sound errupted. She had, finally, come soaring across the threshold of pain a human being could take, and was rapidly approaching the end of consciousness. Dash's voice was in the background, something she felt more than heard. She didn't hear what he said. But then there was another voice, unfamiliar, and the waves of cold receeded. The erractic spasms subsided. She collapsed on the ground, unable to muster the strength to even turn her head. Her open eyes saw only faint blurs before everything faded to black. This time, however, it was a comforting black, a darkness with arms held wide open. The pain became a dull ache that faded out to nothing. Blood dribbled out of her mouth as the final beads of sweat hit the floor.

This time, when it went black, it went black for good.

* * *

"You thought you could face this thing alone in your condition?"

"For her?" Dash asked as he grabbed the arms of a goon and threw him bodily into a nearby dresser. "Hell yeah!"

Any other time, any other day, Danny might have congratulated Dash on growing a heart. He might have snarked at the situation. But this was no normal fight. People were dying. People weren't getting hurt, they were being slaughtered, and he had never known rage like this before. He was angry at everything, everyone; himself, the monster, the police, the world. There was very little of the person he used to be left inside him. Danny Fenton was dying, replaced with a darker and edgier Danny Phantom that he didn't like or want. Unfortunately, drastic times called for drastic action, and as they shoved aside possessed humans, he felt an unfamiliar shiver go down his spine. Black fog swirled out of his mouth when he drew closer to Rashmi's body. _No, just Rashmi. She's not dead yet._ The Indian girl looked frailer than he'd ever seen her, her body bloody and covered in welts that would leave permanent scars. He didn't want to move her in this condition, but whatever this thing was took priority over saving her.

Dash knelt by Rashmi, going pale. "Ras... It'll be okay, I promise..." He scooped her up into his arms. She was cold and unnaturally still in his arms. "It'll be okay now."

"Get her out of here," Danny said firmly. "She needs a doctor."

The world flashed.

Colors sharpened until they were so bright it was painful before disintegrating, flashing monochrome as if the world had been drained of color. A hand made of shadow reached out for them, causing Dash to run, clutching Rashmi close. Insivible hands snagged at his clothes, his ankles, his body, and he pushed forward. As an experienced sports player, he knew how to work through the pain, push it aside. Normally his chant was something like _I have to win_. Right now it was _I won't let them get you, Rashmi, I won't let them get you I won't I won't I won't_. His vision betrayed him, flashing red and then there was a figure in front of him, inhuman and nightmarish, but he used his shoulder to bust a door in and he went tumbling through.

As insane as it was, somehow, someway, a door in an old house in Amity Park led to a forest somewhere far away. Had he been paying attention the warmth, the sudden humidity, and the crickets would have given it away. The trees had thick leaves, unlike home, and there were vines and ferns all around him. He ran on a wooden pathway through the near total darkness, ignoring the bugs and the distortion of colors all around him. The crickets chirp dulled, roared, screeched, sound acting in ways it physically couldn't. And he didn't stop. It wasn't long until his lungs were begging for a break and his ribs were on fire from an injury pushed too far, but he couldn't stop. Up ahead were the lights of civilization. So close. He had to keep moving. He couldn't stop, no matter what it cost him. _Hang on, Rashmi, hang on, it'll be okay, it'll be okay, because you... you're the only real person I've ever known and if you weren't here I would be _alone_ again and I love you. I love you, I love you, I should have said it on the phone, I..._

"I won't let them get you!"

* * *

Valerie was not panicking, but it was a near thing.

Why was it she could never just be normal? She couldn't have any peace, could she, could never just sit down and watch TV with her father like a normal girl? Well, if this thing thought it was going to hurt him it was wrong. After an initial shriek she shoved him into a closet and stood outside of it, breaking a glass vase and holding it up as a weapon. When the thing lurched at her, she swiped at its eye and sent it scampering across the room. The blood was dark, a true crimson instead of human red or ghostly green. It breathed heavily, eyeing her warily. There had been no resistancce before. The humans hadn't had reactions so fast or will so determined. No matter. It jumped again, a flash of naked skin and movement, and she struck it hard, grabbing it by the neck and shoving the glass into the Nokta's eyesocket, deeper, deeper, hitting brain tissue. The thing screamed before going limp. She threw it to the side to bolt to the kitchen, where knives remained. She pulled out two, and had turned to hand one to her father when she heard the back door pop open. Whisper-silent, she pressed herself against the wall, waiting patiently and holding her breath.

The ensuing fight was a blur of motion and a symphony of conflicting sounds. Growling, snarling, screaming, yellling; stabbing, pushing, shoving, throwing herself to the ground to throw the thing off balance. She stabbed at it again, driving the knife in so deep she lost her grip on the handle, but before the thing was even dead its companion was on her, clawing at her neck. She kicked with both legs and got him off of her. His reflexes were faster, super human, and he kept at her as she fought to get a clear shot at his eyes is. In a blind panic - for she was now in the throes of it - she swiped at his hand and pinned it to the floor, cracking the cheap tile. She lunged for the knife drawer. As she fumbled for one there was a terrible ripping sound. She was sent crashing to the ground as the thing grabbed at her with its one good hand. Her leg burned with sudden pain, but on her way down she grabbed the drawer and brought the knives crashing down all around her. Valerie grabbed them quickly, cutting her hand open as she gripped them tightly and stabbed the thing as it bit into her thigh.

Her blood was flowing out, and forming a small pool. She stared up at her horrified father as sparks danced through her vision. "Daddy...? Help."

Then she collapsed.

* * *

Danny had never felt anything like this.

Cold. Pain. Fire. Light. Dark. He felt his pulse, heard his eyes moving, inhaled the scent of something that stabbed at his lungs like knives. There was no way to describe what his ghostly sixth sense was telling him in human terms. If he had to try he would say he felt the malice, the hate, the pure and focused _evil_ of something so great and powerful that it drove him to his knees just by standing before him. He had never felt anything like it. His evil self had felt dark. Compared to this he was a shade of light gray, a saint, a pathetic loser. Pure nightmarish insanity, a whirlwind of everything terrible and repulsive, radiated out. It saturated the air, toxic and tangible. He felt a presence crushing and harsh, a hundred pound weight on his shoulders, a pressure so instense it made him want to scream. And it wasn't even attacking. It stood there, calm, collected, thinking. Observing, perhaps?

There was a head, pale but still flesh-toned, without a face. The clothing was black and sleek, emphasizing a body too tall and thin to be human, Nokta or ghost. He swayed on his feet, blank head tilting and turning as if looking somehow. This was not a ghost. This thing had never been human. It had never been mortal, or vulnerable, or emotional. It was mavolence and sadism. It was beyond a human's understanding. Danny knew it shouldn't be here the same way he knew the sun would rise tomorrow. Something was so powerfully wrong that he wanted to run, to look away, to never look at this thing again. He had never really used his sixth sense before; now it was so acute it was a part of him as integral as his sight or hearing. Danny stood, with great effort, never daring to glance away from the man in front of him.

****

You are not my enemy. Stand down, Phantom.

"No," he replied, clenching his fists. "I don't know what you are, but you won't get through me."

He tilted his human head, at an angle that would've been painful for an actual human. **You cannot fight me. I am not of this realm. I am eldritch. I cannot be stopped.**

"I don't know what eldritch means, other than a slur for anything not human. I also don't know how to quit." Green light surrounded Danny's hands. "This isn't up for debate."

****

Pity. You did not have to die.

And then tentacles, shadows, tendrils of darkness that sucked the light out of the room burst forth from the thin man's back, lashing out at Danny before he could dodge. He turned intangible and yet the grip didn't loosen. He was impaled, pinned to a wall, and green ectoplasm was dripping out. Flying away didn't work; his opponent simply appeared in front of him, lashing out again. Danny crashed to the ground, a dark tendril pushed through the old wound, digging deeper and coming out the other side. The room spun as he fought not to pass out. There was an equally harsh uphill fight not to detransform, to become human in the presence of something he couldn't face in immortal form. He gasped as hard as if he were in human form, shutting his eyes against the waves of pain. They pulsed. Pulsed? He opened his eyes and studied the man in front of him. He had a pulse. It was slow and steady, like a sleeping person's heartbeat. As incomprehensible as this man was, he was alive. That meant he could be killed. There was a glimmer of hope up ahead, however small and weak.

The pain lessened. The tendril was weaker. And Danny noticed, even if he didn't know what it meant.

**You cannot stop me now. I am the Slender Man, I have no weakness. I am older than you can fathom. Once let into the world I will always be able to come back. The door cannot be shut, only opened. Stand down, Phantom, while you can still stand.**

_Don't listen to him, Danny!_

"Baxael?" he muttered weakly. The faceless man tilted his head.

_Daniel, I... am going to get in a lot of trouble for this, but, you must know. He's trying to distract you so you won't know his weakness._

"Weakness?"

_We have no idea what it is. But once, in another universe, a man called Alex Kralie once realized what it was and used it to get rid of him. It can only be found up close, in his presence. You can do this, if you focus! Block him out! Block _me_ out! Focus!_

It was true, the Slender Man's impaling him didn't hurt quite as much, but what had he done right before that? Closed his eyes? Rashmi had been doing that and it hadn't had any effect. He'd been listening the heartbeat still pulsing through him from this nightmarish thing, and thinking... thinking that he was defeatable! That was it! Slender Man's weakness was not being feared. Somehow the fact that his weakness was as easily as saying 'I don't believe in you' made him less frightening, which in turn weakened him more. Danny grinned wickedly. He was going to beat the shit out of this monster, enjoy every second of it and then he was going to haul him back from whence he came. His ghostly power flowed through his hands, and he hit the dark creature with two beams of green ectoplasm square in the chest. The tendril in his chest vanished as a hundred more swirled outward, defensively. But Danny couldn't let himself be afraid. His mother hadn't been afraid when she'd saved him, when she'd kept him to begin with. She'd loved him like Danny loved his parents, his sister, his friends, this whole town. And righteous anger flowed through him, different than the way he felt when he had his nightmares, strong and pure. He struck again, throwing the Slender Man through a wall.

"You think you're tough? You're nothing, _nothing_ compared to what I've had to go through! You're not any scarier than what goes on in my head, these feelings I keep having to suppress!" As he spoke, he punctuated each sentence with a beam of light, blasts that slammed the Slender Man back, weakening him. "Highschool was worse than you! Middle school was worse than you! Vlad's worse than you!" He hadn't noticed, but his light was growing steadily brighter as he continued. "I'm so sick of having to fight off people who think they're the next bringer of the apocalypse! I have news for you, you're a jackass in a suit with combat tentacles! That's it! That's it and I don't care if you make me feel creeped out - lawn gnomes and Christmas trees do that, too! You're on par with a _mall Santai! _You're a failure as a villain, a person and a force of evil! Try apprenticing under the Box Ghost sometime, it might help!"

**Am I really so useless? After all, I killed your mother.**

"What?" He shook his head. "No, you're lying, you're trying to pretend you're a badass when you're not-"

**I am not. Let me show you, Phantom child...**


	9. Always A Bigger Fish

**Responses To Reviews, Revenge Of The Sequel!**

**Codiak:** And now I feel bad for giving Dexter a bit part in this. DX

**Midnayuki:** Well, my face is now beet red. I feel honored that you would even think that, let alone say it in a review. I hope the ending doesn't disappoint!

**XoX Bloody Alice T. T: **I tried to get this chapter out quickly since my last upload took so long. I hope that helps! I feel terrible about the schedule slip and I hope this makes up for it.

**Invader Johnny:** Oh, really? In a story this dark, you think that's a given? Well, we'll see about that! ;D

**Valid User Name:** I laughed when I realized that. Thanks for pointing that out. God, I love my reviewers.

**Dragon Dancer 123:** Typos are a natural byproduct of my work. XD I'll try and go fix it later.

Well, it's the finale, folks. It clocks in at just under 4000 words, and I hope it doesn't disappoint. Lord knows I tried, but it may be a little rushed regardless. Hopefully this doesn't strike anyone as a Deus Ex Machina.

* * *

**You think you're the first human to try this? To try to fake as if you don't fear me? It didn't save Kralie, it didn't save Strahm, it didn't even save your mother. In the end, the only one who ever managed to avoid being killed by me was the one who destroyed his own memories, and what life does he now live? A life of running, fear without reason, no love, no friends, not even a solid idea of what his name is.**

_A man, in his early twenties, huddled in the corner of an abandoned building. His hair was already completely gray despite his age. His large, expressive dark brown eyes were dead and empty. He stared blankly past his cracked glasses, drawing his black coat closer around himself. His skin was pale, the color of an undernourished third-world citizen, and his hands were calloused. He dared not light a fire, not with police so close. One thing he knew, even without his memory, was that he could never be caught. He could never be near anyone. Even if his concious mind didn't remember Slender Man, his subconscious did. The knowledge that talking to a person about Slender Man enabled Him to manifest before them meant that he would always fear people without knowing why. He couldn't risk social contact. He couldn't risk spreading the dark plague. But because he didn't remember that part of his life, he didn't know that was why he was doing this. He was afraid of the world, shy of humanity, on the run, without knowing why he was running or living in the shadow of fear. He sighed, his cold breath forming a cloud in the air. Outside, it was beginning to snow again. It was so thick it was up to his knees in many spots._

_Yet he sprang to his feet and ran anyway, scared by the form of his fellow homeless white trash. He bolted like a frightened deer, running until he collapsed, nearly twenty blocks away. He fell to his hands and knees, his breathing heavy and shallow, tears tumbling down his cheeks. They formed ice droplets when they hit the ground. He sobbed and smashed his fist against the ice angrily, but all he succeeded in doing was drawing blood. Slowly, he rose and continued on his way, slumping up against the wall of an alley next to a heater vent. In the quiet night Danny could see Christmas lights and hear people laughing. They didn't notice the lanky figure curled up on the ground. Or they chose not to._

**This is their victory. The human who 'beat' me. Your champion is a broken piece of trash laying discarded in the alley. You don't think he tried what you're trying? But you can't lie to your subconscious. Some part of you will always fear me, and thus give me power. I let him live because his life is now not worth taking. And your mother...**

_Her hair, long and down, flew behind her as she ran, muttering to herself. "He's not real, he can't get me, he's a myth, a myth, a story, like Cinderella or Moth Man. The Nokta are real, the Deqoqri are real, the Fari are real, ghosts are real, and that's it. That's it that's it that's it."_

_Danny was in her arms. His stomach twisted; this was his own memory. He remembered the sharp smell of her dark tan jacket. It was animal hide of some kind, a gift from Jocasta. It smelled of his cigarettes and her sweat. He had clutched her and buried his face in her chest, too scared to look anymore. He didn't want to see anymore monsters. Mommy said she wasn't going to let them get him. She knew a place where he would safe forever. They were going to go to the nice people. It was all going to be okay. Mommy promised. The ice cracked under her boots as she made a beeline through the trees, over fences, through yards. Subtlety was lost. The only thing that mattered was saving Danny. Tree branches that might have been Slender Man's tendrils tore at her sleeves and face, but it didn't even register. Andra was past caring what happened to her. The Nokta were on the rise. Not Slender Man. He was a myth, just an urban legend, a scary story, and an old forgotten one at that. Nobody really believed in him other than little children and she wasn't a child, she was up to her neck in real world problems. Bills, homelessness, single motherhood - that kind of thing. She had real problems to take care of. There was no Slender Man and if He did exist He had to take a number because she was damn busy._

_She reached the Fenton's doorstep. What followed was a blur of shouting and then sobbing, hysterical broken sobbing. Andra collasped into Jack, begging, pleading for him to take 'Dandan', and Danny was crying, reaching for her, but she turned away, her face hidden by her long hair. It covered her like a curtain, and brushed against his cheeks as she knelt to kiss him gently on the top of the head before turning to leave. Jack was offering her money, shelter, help, and she was off again, fleeing into the darkness, crying so hard she could barely see where she was going. She ran until the terrible sounds of her son crying were behind her, and too weak to keep up any mental barrier against Him, she fell limp as a rag doll into His arms._

"What did you do to my mother?" Danny whispered, barely able to speak.

**I used her as a Hollow Proxy. You have seen them. They are excellent tools to further me in my goals. I used her to exacerbate the Nokta situation rather than stop it. It kept the meddlers in Afterworld busy while I made my preparations. Time flows differently for me. I am in many worlds at once. I am in none permanently. Doors can be opened, never closed, but Kralie did manage to shut the door to me temporarily by murdering my Proxies - his friends, his family, his own wife. This would not have been enough to stop me, but his mind wiped itself of knowledge of my existance. He may see me in a tree or cloud or branch, but it's a ghost of an image. It's not enough to let me back in yet. One day he'll recover his memories and I will be back, forever. A lack of Proxies is not even a temporary solution without a total lack of remembrance of me. So you see, your only plausible defeat of me involves killing the girl, her man, and yourself. And you do not have the courage to do those things. A man like Kralie is one in a million worlds.**

Kill himself? To save the world? And kill Rashmi, poor bullied and downtrodden Rashmi, a foreigner in a strange land, the best thing to ever happen to Dash? She was the only one who ever looked at Dash as a person. Even Danny, for all his bitching about stereotypes, hadn't down that. He hadn't reached out to the blond. When someone finally bothered, Dash revealed himself not to be a monster. He was pressured to succeed from every direction, used for his popularity, ignored at home until he brought home trophies. He was completely alone until he found his fellow lone wolf in the crowd. Now that he was finally even the tiniest bit happy, Danny had to... if he wanted to save the world, he had to kill him. He had to kill a middle school girl whose life was just beginning, a girl unmoved by the social caste of American society. He had to end his own life. Dying scared him, he realized with a start. It scared him more than murder did, because murder wasn't an uncertain thing. Where would he go when he died? The Ghost Zone? Afterworld? Heaven? Hell? He didn't know anymore what would happen, if he'd ever known. The idea repulsed him.

But... everyone was depending on him...

**Do you know what I have done, Phantom? Do you know how many lives I have taken? It was easy as snuffing out a candle. You cannot defeat me.**

_So much blood. Children ripped in half, adults split open from head to abdomen, whole families slaughtered together. But there was no purpose, no eating of the flesh or revenge. This was just malice, anger, hate, sadism - all that was dark coming together in one being. He tortured them, following, gathering their fear as raw power, and then He lashed out, destroying them. Sometimes He just appeared in front of their cars to make them crash, or used a tendril to cut their brakes. Sometimes He burned their houses around them. Sometimes He made one a Proxy and had them kill their own children, parents, siblings, waking up with blood on their hands and horror in their hearts as the police pounded on the door. He made them kill themselves, He wiped their memories, He possessed them and sent them after strangers and friends alike. He stole people away and left the families forever wondering. He had never been caught, because police couldn't fathom what they were dealing with._

_The rumors spread, and with it came an increase in His power, until they were cowering in fear of Him. He ruled a land of blood and darkness, Proxies, loss, pain, sacrifices and broken people. When He conquered one world He simply moved on. Danny didn't have a prayer. But..._

But Alex Kralie had beaten Him. It had cost him everything, taken everything he had, and he'd had to do unspeakable things, but the point was it could be done. He was not an undefeatable monster. He wasn't some eldritch ebomination. He was physical, mortal, and had a weakness. His weakness was an inability to understand humankind. Humans could never be beaten, not entirely. Even totalatarian regimes had their resistance, because there was no way to buy off everyone, to break every single human being. There would always be resistance. Danny was filled with the revelatory knowledge that, somewhere out there in those conquered worlds, there were humans fighting back. There were people standing up and saying enough was enough, that they would not be intimidated. If Kralie could win, human, mortal, unarmed, with only his wits, then damn it, Danny could too! It had already been done, and if he couldn't win the fight alone he would strike a blow so hard and deep Slender Man would take decades to recover from it.

"NO!" he screamed angrily, clenching his fists. "You will not hurt my world! You cannot hurt us! You cannot touch us! I refuse to let you! Go ahead and try to brainwash me if it makes you feel better! It won't help! My dimension is stronger than the others, filled with good people, honest people. Sure they may have their fears, but in the end they put it all aside when lives are on the line! Striking me down will only make people rise up against you harder than ever before! Go ahead and spread your name here so that the ghost hunters, Nokta and ghostly spirits can all rise up against you and beat you senseless! My mother didn't die in vain, she died keeping you away, didn't she? Because you took control of her, but you couldn't make her spread rumors of you. Otherwise you'd have come through to this world long ago. It took you nearly ten years after she kicked your sorry ass to even get another breakthrough. Now I'm going to double her record!"

His fist burned with white flames so bright they made the night day. Slender Man shrunk back, collapsing on the ground. **That is not possible. You would have to be Nokta to-**

"I am. You miscalculated - but that's a pretty regular occurrence for ego maniacs like you, isn't it?" Danny smirked. "Hey, my one liners are back! Life's looking up, isn't it?"

**You cannot hope to beat me with this new power. The Nokta would have done it long before you if that were all it took.**

"Save the psychobabble for someone who cares," Danny replied, white fire burning higher. "This? This isn't me faking myself out or giving myself a mental pep talk. This is me killing you. You'd better hope God's not real, or He'll be _pissed_ when you get there."

And with that he shoved his hands forward, white hot power flowing through him as naturally as breathing. The world lit up, the house catching fire all around him, as the Slender Man teleported over to the nearest door. He turned His blank face towards Danny briefly, then chuckled lowly. **This is not over, Phantom.**

Danny threw a bolt of fire at Him, but He vanished into the night. Danny flew over, yanked open the door to reveal a thick forest, and let loose a torrential wave of flame that flooded the whole area. Then he slammed the door shut, held it against someone pulling it on the other side, and, when the pulling stopped and the heat increased to unbearable proportions, he collapsed in the burning house, detransforming on the spot. The black haired boy smiled contentedly in his sleep as the fire formed a perfect circle around him, keeping him safe. The fire department found Danny Fenton there alongside a slew of other people who didn't remember a thing. The oddest thing was how few burns he had on him, but the Fentons were happy to have their son back and the investigators were happy to leave it at that.

* * *

He told the police he couldn't remember anything, which Tomor didn't buy but didn't press him on. Vlad seemed relieved to see Danny, though the teen couldn't fathom why. Mayor Masters also announced he would be beefing up the police department and expanding it in size, which Danny took to be a token act to gain the public's approval. Sam and Tucker tackled Danny the second he was out of the hospital and demanded an explanation. He told them later that morning, sitting on Sam's bed, talking in hushed tones. He meant to just tell them about Slender Man and the Nokta, but everything came out. Andra, her angelic smile, her leaving him with the Fentons, her laying down her life to keep them safe. Alex Kralie's horrible act of protection against the forces of evil. Jocasta. The little ghost boy. Baxael. Everything spilled out. Sam held one of his hands and Tucker placed a hand on his shoulder while he rambled. In the end they agreed not to talk about it again unless he wanted to, and that was that.

Danny introduced his parents to Naran Pashki and said she'd helped him remember things. It was true, to a fault, but he didn't tell them about being part Nokta. Not that he didn't trust them to believe him or love him, but he didn't want to relive the horrors of the past anymore. He didn't want to talk about his mother because once he started he couldn't stop. He just wanted to leave the past in the past, and let the dead rest in peace. Naran was happy to comply with this; she had her own problems to attend to. Rashmi was so severly injured she was in the intensive care unit for a week and in the ICU for two weeks. Eventually, after skin grafts, blood transfusions, and over a hundred stitches, they moved her to the regular wing of the hospital to recover. How they'd ended up in Alabama was a lot harder to explain, but Dash cobbled together a story about his girlfriend being kidnapped and him following. It took some extensive lying to get the police off their case. As far as Danny knew they were still investigating it. The only Dash cared about was that Rashmi was going to live.

"I love you," he told her when she woke up, clutching her sole unbandaged hand. "I love you so much. I'm so sorry, Ras..."

"Don't be," she murmured. "You saved me... Dash, you could have been killed."

"I live in Amity Park. That's just a typical Monday," he said, smiling weakly through emotional tears he didn't want to have. "Just worry about yourself. You've got to get better in time for the school dance, you know."

"I don't think I'll make the Snow Ball," Rashmi replied softly. "But if you'll have me, I'd be honored to go to Spring Fling with you."

"I already got us tickets." He leaned over and kissed her bandaged head. "And I've been walking Snowy, so it's all okay. Just rest. It's all okay, I promise. And I don't lie. Not to you."

She chuckled quietly. "I like that you qualified that statement with 'not to you'."

"Jailbait."

"Jock."

"Bilingual vocabulary nerd."

"Love you."

"Love you too.

* * *

Valerie required nearly two hundred stitches.

She woke up to find her ex-boyfriend had left a bundle of aster flowers on her bedside table. Danny had somehow remembered that after all this time, along with her favorite color. Her father had slept by her side night and day, hovering over her. She would take monthes of physical therapy to get the full use of her leg back, but she and her father had never been closer. He cried as he held her close, and the normally proud girl let herself be held as if she were a child. She wasn't sure how long they stayed like that, only that the world seemed better now, more hopeful. Beams of warm sunlight fell on them, bathing the world in a golden glow.

"Your mother would be proud," he whispered, looking into her eyes. "You two are the strongest women I've ever met."

And she couldn't respond to that because she was too busy trying not to cry. Then she gave up the fight, wrapped her arms around him and smiled through her tears. "Next time I won't use the fine cutlery."

He rolled his eyes in response, chuckling despite the gravity of the situation. "Oh, teenagers and their witty one liners..."

* * *

"Baxael?"

"Yes, eldritch? I have places to get to, you know. Punishments are about to be assigned."

"That was one of the things I wanted to talk to you about. Why are you being punished?"

"I intervened much more in your world than I was meant to. It was, however, because the situation was much graver than we thought. I will not be punished too harshly, but under normal circumstances acting as I did would have reprecussions. You see, my people earn their powers by serving the ultimate good loyally and without mistakes. Our powers increase as we do good the right way, but striking off on our own can be a grave mistake sometimes. A little power corrupts; not all mistakes work out as well as this. That's why they train us to despise mortals, so we don't get attached and skew everything to help our favorites while ignoring the rest. I didn't stick to the plan. They will not be pleased, my supervisors, but I only began to err wildly when Slender Man was present. They will not be harsh on me."

"That's good. You... you really saved me back there. And because of you I know what happened to my mother. I just wanted to thank you for that before you go, though I do have one other question. The white fire: what was that and why didn't I see any other Nokta use it?"

"That's two questions, but I'll answer anyway. It can only be used under certain emotional stress. Your father used it more often than any other Nokta I knew. I'm not surprised you inherited his talent for it, though your ghostly powers boosted it tremendously." Baxael shifted, looking unsure of himself and choosing his words carefully. "Not all Nokta are monsters. Those that eat people are. Your father was not among their ranks. You should not live your life mourning your heritage. Your parents loved each other, and they loved you. They would not want this pain for you."

"...thanks, Bax."

He shuddered. "Don't call me that. It sounds too human. Now, is there anything else...?"

"Nope. Go earn your angel wings or whatever," Danny smiled warmly. "If you ever need me, you know where I live."

"That I do. Good luck, you eldritch abomination," Baxael said affectionately.

"Right back at you, you winged rat."

* * *

Well, that was a spectacular failure.

Slender wasn't supposed to engage Phantom like this. He was meant only to keep Phantom at bay, not to attempt a murder. And it seems after years of near total silence he decided to become a blabbermouth in the presence of a fellow eldritch. I've had him punished severely for his errors. So now we are left with an unfortunate dilemna. I'm sorry to say we'll be moving forward in the plans a bit. Plan A was never a sure shot. It was, however, successful in getting many eldritch things through while Danny was busy with Slender. The door is open to me now, and I can begin taking action against him. But it's not merely the portal between our realms that I refer to...

You see, I was watching him quite closely. The horrors of the nightmare realm weren't what nearly drove him over the edge. It was Slender's cheesy little mind games. They were poorly executed, over dramatic, and thus ultimately failures. But it has opened my eyes to the possibility of driving Phantom insane in order to win over him. I don't need any particular kind of insanity from him, just enough to break him. Although the details of this plan yet elude me, I'm sure this is the way to win against him. With him immobilized the time keeper is as good as mine. Your help will be necessary for this. Step one is overloading him with every evil and wicked thing we have, then we will ruin his mundane life while he's out and about. Where physical warfare and torture failed all out psychological attack will be his downfall. I see the path, and out action must be swift and decisive.

If you're free, please come right away. If not, please come all the same, since I technically still own you.

Love,

Mandy


End file.
